Safety Technology for the Whole Value Chain

Q: How have recent changes in the Mexican oil and gas industry created demand for new safety products and services?

A: Safety has definitely been refocused and centralized within industry operations. Companies are increasingly concerned about the certifications behind their safety products and as such, a bigger market has been created for products that can be proven to meet national and international standards. As a result, the value of our brand has improved, thanks to its reliability in this and other industries. Many products and services that were focused on a preventative approach to safety, and which perhaps were not considered so relevant before, are now becoming more important to our current and prospective clients. A good example are our drug and alcohol screening and detection systems. This is an emerging area within our product development that has been proven to play a tangible role in accident prevention by significantly reducing the operational risk involved in dangerous activities.

These types of solutions are what the industry is now demanding of us, which is intelligent and integrated systems that can be operated remotely, updated in real time and, eventually, generate data designed. These systems could also monitor the health conditions of all workers in real time.

Q: How does Dräger contribute to closing the gap between the sophistication of Mexican oil and gas safety norms and regulations and their more uneven implementation?

A: Currently, we have a close relationship with the normativity safety committees that dictate what the expectations will be when putting together safety legislation in Mexico. We also make significant investments in industry training programs. In this way, we can connect the whole process into one streamlined line of action: we play a role in defining the standards and then directly intervene with training to make sure those standards can be met by the workforce.

Q: How do you present high-end safety products and services as solutions for the upstream sector in terms of efficiency and productivity?

A: Security must be perceived by operators as a central pillar in the efficiency of their processes. Besides protecting their personnel, investing in safety must be understood as a way to ensure the continuity of our clients’ business. We generate this understanding by focusing on technological development. Instead of offering what seems like a costly safety product or service, we offer technology that can increase productivity by reducing operational costs and maximizing the output of personnel activities. For instance, now our product developments are focused on the IIoT. In the near future, we will be able to provide a platform that can reliably execute processes remotely through devices communicating with each other. This facilitates and adds accuracy to all sorts of services that usually cause significant downtime in upstream assets and worksites, such as gas detection, flame prevention and emergency response. This is all aligned with our evolution into a company that works much more as an integrated safety service provider with consultancy and advisory functions that can guarantee these kinds of operational results and can respond quickly to any unexpected situation.

Q: What do you identify as the most important areas of focus during the planning and EPC phases to guarantee the best safety conditions for the new Dos Bocas refinery?

A: A risk analysis specific to this project is essential. There will be many opportunities throughout the EPC phase to intervene and address any areas of concern that might arise. Our close relationship with the project would facilitate these interventions by establishing us as partners of all the companies involved. Our input into the project’s design is focused on enabling and optimizing safety functions crucial to these types of downstream worksites. We will remain working close to this project once the refinery is online and operational since we are recognized as a company that is involved on the whole operational life of the projects.

Dräger Safety Mexico provides products and services in the area of safety systems for upstream and downstream
worksites, such as gas detection and fire-fighting equipment, under Dräger’s wider international umbrella.