Safety Practices in the Oil and Gas Industries of the Nigerian Petroleum Sector

Abstract

The objective of this study was to determine the current safety practices in the oil and gas firms of the Nigerian petroleum sector. The study adopted a cross sectional research design in sampling 373 employees from the upstream, midstream and downstream industries. The main instrument for data collection was the structured questionnaire. The systematic sampling was adopted in the administration of the questionnaires .A 5-pointer modified Likert scale of strongly agree (SA), Agree (A), disagree (D), strongly disagree (SD) and undecided (U), was adopted in the present study. IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences was employed in analysis of the data. The result of the educational qualification of the employees showed that 50(13%) had diploma, 168(45%) had first degree, 120(32%) had master's degree while 35(10%) employees had PhD. Most of the employees were from the midstream sector (50.9%) followed by the downstream sector (26.3%) and the upstream sector (22.8%) respectively. The ranking o Safety practices showed that organizational safety policy ranked 1^st followed by management commitment (2^nd) the safety inspections and safety communication. However, Safety training/retraining and employee incentive/reward ranked 5^th and 6^th respectively. A strong positive correlation (r=0.842) and a statistically significant difference (p=0.045) was observed between educational qualification of the employees and the safety compliance. While safety practices are reported observed the oil and gas firms in Nigeria as reported in the study, it is strongly recommended that routine safety assessment should be carried out by firms with a view to receiving recommendations from employees on how to improve the safety culture of the firms in all upstream, midstream and downstream sectors while safety compliant employees should me motivated through rewards and incentives.