After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the Department of Energy (DoE) asked the National Petroleum Council (NPC) to provide specific actionable steps to better prepare the oil and natural gas industry’s response to natural disasters. In response, the NPC released “Enhancing Emergency Preparedness for Natural Disasters” in 2014, which included a series of recommendations for emergency preparedness, response and recovery in the oil and natural gas industry. A key finding? That effective communications during emergency response is a major challenge for the industry and that a standardized, rehearsed approach toward communications that addresses escalated and expanding responses as an event unfolds is critical.

Three years later, in 2017, hurricane Harvey hit the United States, impacting the oil and natural gas industry significantly. The storm shutdown 22% of the nation’s refining capacity and 25% of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico while fuel shortages hit Houston, Austin, and Dallas. In interviews with executives from companies impacted by Harvey, they emphasized the importance of communications once again – however in a more positive light. The success of response plans was directly connected to the strength of the communication systems put in place and used to implement them. During Harvey, a variety of platforms were used to communicate plans, including emails, phone trees, daily summary text messages, call-in numbers, text blasts and emergency alerts. One CEO mentioned leveraging text to contact crisis managers as a way to keep them informed without disrupting them.

What these responses to natural disasters show us is that communication lies at the heart of successful incident response for the oil and natural gas industry. The industry faces a variety of risks from natural disasters, to fires and explosions, oil or hazardous material spills, or vessel collisions—just to name a few. Having a strong response plan that is successfully implemented through strong communications to rapidly notify first responders, response teams, EMOs and regulators - and then coordinate response mitigates these risks.In the oil and gas industry, strong communications are standardized communications. API points out in their Oil and Natural Gas Industry Preparedness Handbook that without robust formalized communications processes and procedures, information sharing becomes dependent on personal relationships. This is extremely risky as there is no guarantee that the individuals sharing that rapport will readily be available during an incident. Standardized and even automated processes ensure that the correct stakeholders will share effective information during an event and establishes mechanisms to keep information flow clear—eliminating situations where information is requested from multiple parties.