API Pipeline Safety Management System PSMS Third-Party Assessment Program: A Valuable Tool to Help Industry Implement PSMS

The American Petroleum Institute (API) represents all segments of the natural gas and oil industry, aiming to accelerate safety and environmental progress across operations while meeting global demand for affordable, reliable, and cleaner energy. Through API and in partnership with the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), state pipeline regulators, and other interested stakeholders, pipeline operators developed API Recommended Practice (RP) 1173: Pipeline Safety Management Systems. API RP 1173 users understand how to systematically manage pipeline safety and continuously measure progress to improve overall pipeline safety performance. The core principle of API RP 1173 is the "Plan-Do-Check-Act" cycle. It requires the operator to determine the goals, objectives, and targets needed to be undertaken, complete those initiatives, and periodically review the Pipeline Safety Management System (PSMS) on an operator's determined cycle or at a minimum of a three-year cycle. API RP 1173 and the Pipeline SMS Maturity Model and Tools are primary resources to support API Energy Excellence® implementation. API Energy Excellence (launched in 2021) is another critical API program in which all API members commit to enhance the integrity of operations across the industry by applying standards, implementing workforce training programs, and participating in performance initiatives. Ultimately, these conditions drive the industry towards its zero-incident goal by ensuring that the PSMS's various components are regularly reviewed and continually evolving. To that point and as part of the industry's ongoing commitment to continuous pipeline safety improvements, API, in collaboration with industry partners, developed a not-for-profit Pipeline SMS Assessment Program in 2019 and fully launched the offering in January 2020. Unlike most Pipeline Safety or SMS assessments, the API Third-Party Assessment Program utilizes a diverse set of assessors with multiple affiliations, ranging from traditional SMS firms to retired industry executives who wish to give back to the industry by sharing their experience with others. API has conducted many assessments to date, and the benchmarking from these assessments helps operators gauge how their implementation is relative to their peers. Also, because API is the custodian of RP 1173, learnings from these assessments can naturally be fed back into the standards development process to ensure the next version of RP 1173 is an even better Plan-Do-Check-Act Process. The API Pipeline SMS Assessment (PSMS Assessment) program gives the operator access to the most experienced and knowledgeable assessors. It provides the operator with the opportunity to learn notable practices utilized across the pipeline industry. In 2021 and beyond, API looks forward to taking the assessment program worldwide, increasing industry lessons learned, cataloging good practices, looking for opportunities to increase effectiveness, and giving industry valuable benchmarking, all aimed at our shared goal of zero incidents

Linguistic-cognitive and communicative-pragmatic features of a politician’s speech activity in a discursive position “after power”

The cognitive and speech activity of the linguistic personality of a politician in the discursive position “after power” has a number of significant differences in comparison with the stages “before power” and “in power”. Its general cognitive and communicative-pragmatic character that can be described as accumulative-syncretic, adaptive and agonal, is due, firstly, to the seamless combination of substantive-thematic and speech signals of the personal and political past experiences. These experiences are projected onto the issues of the supra-individual present and included in the forecasts of the social future. These signals are present in texts generated by the politician during the post-power period. There is a subject-object “stratification” with a different balance of a subject and/or object functional status in the structure of the linguistic personality of the post-power politician. As a (proactive) subject of cognition and communication, the politician “after power” creates his/her own texts, primarily memoirs and (oral) political speeches. Becoming the object of evaluation, the politician verbally responds to them as a mental-speech subject of speech utterances in communicative situations of interviews, political discussions, public responses to articles of other politicians or comments of journalists that are close or distant to the other side of the communication. At the same time, being an object, not only with social and professional functions, but also personal qualities of the ex-politician are publicly discussed, which indicates the mandatory combination of institutional, professional and individual (third-party) assessment parameters in the structure of his/her personality.

API RP 1173 Pipeline SMS Third-Party Assessment Program: A Key Industry Tool for Evaluating and Supporting Implementation of Pipeline Safety Management Systems

Since the publication of API Recommended Practice (RP) 1173: Pipeline Safety Management Systems, in July 2015, the energy pipeline trade groups in North America (American Petroleum Institute, Association of Oil Pipelines, American Gas Association, Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, and the American Public Gas Association) have worked collaboratively to develop tools and programs to assist energy pipeline operators with the development and implementation of Pipeline Safety Management System (Pipeline SMS) programs and processes. These resources include a Planning Tool, Implementation Tool and Evaluation Tool, as well as an industry-developed Maturity Model that describes a continuum of implementation levels, based on conformance to RP 1173 as well as implementation effectiveness. These resources can be found online and are supplemented by the Pipeline SMS Third-Party Assessment Program developed by API. Applying API’s experiences with successful safety programs in other segments and with significant contributions from the Pipeline SMS Implementation Team (aforementioned trade groups and various industry operators), the Pipeline SMS Third-Party Assessment Program is designed to be a key tool to facilitate Pipeline SMS implementation and to share and benchmark information to drive improvements in safety performance. The assessments also provide the pipeline industry with an objective, third-party option to test their systems and address the conformity auditing (API RP 1173, Section 10.2.2) and performance and maturity evaluation (API RP 1173, Section 10.2.3 to 10.2.5) requirements of the recommended practice. In 2019, pilot assessments were conducted and in 2020 the Assessment Program is being implemented. Through the piloting process, significant insights were gained into the practical application of the industry Maturity Model and how the assessments can contribute to an operator’s journey improving safety performance. Aligning with the flexibility and scalability goals of RP 1173, the pilot experiences included liquids transmission and gas distribution operators with varying approaches to pipeline SMS implementation. We will discuss the lessons learned through the piloting process and how the plan-do-check-act cycle was applied to improve the processes for planning, staffing and conducting the assessments to ensure that value is being provided to the pipeline industry. An independent assessment through the API Pipeline SMS Third-Party Assessment Program can validate internal efforts to increase maturity of programs, as well as provide operators with benchmarking data so that they can understand where other operators are in their maturity journey.

New Australian bill will limit some foreign ties

Significance The bill went through its first reading the same day, with no amendments tabled by the opposition. The bill will now be considered by the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee, with the second reading expected in November. Impacts Other governments with concerns about foreign interference at sub-national level may follow Australia’s example. Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, facing budget and personnel cuts, may struggle to meet new oversight needs. Affected foreign governments may lobby state/territory governments and universities to oppose the bill. The planned public register of these arrangements will allow for more third-party assessment of these often undisclosed deals.