Simplifying environmental compliance
  from: Argent Consulting Services, Inc.
  by: Greg Haunschild, P.E., President
  Friday, April 04, 2008

Introduction

With environmental compliance increasingly a larger burden on oil industry businesses -- particularly on small to mid-size companies with limited compliance staff in place - times are changing for the better.

Houston-based Argent Consulting Services, Inc. has built a growing reputation on a very specific and successful business model: Simplifying environmental compliance so that anyone can understand and verify regulatory requirements with only a few computer mouse clicks.  Now, with a computer, using Argent's proprietary software and the ability to follow highly-intuitive instructions, everyone is an "expert," resulting in significant savings of time and money for companies industry-wide.

          Says Greg Haunschild, P.E., President of Argent, "The key is systematizing compliance into a more workable onscreen format so that users can see exactly what to do and how to do it, using this specially developed software, the AEMS Evergreen Suite. " The suite is a core system for managing all requirements directly affecting compliance status. Therefore, it covers all regulations, industry standards, permits and company requirements. 

These are processed to create both site-specific manuals and compliance task lists which are kept current with this unique process. In other words,

whenever a regulation or policy changes, the Evergreen Core identifies where these changes impact a company's compliance program and automatically updates the corresponding manuals tasks.  This effectively ensures that a

company's compliance is always "evergreen."  Additionally, companies only need to select the functionality necessary, since AEMS is configured to provide task management, auditing, reporting, capturing institutional knowledge and leveraging the company's existing technology through a modular approach. For companies that already have a task management system, it is easily augmented with Argent's Perpetual Audit^TM and Integration modules.

          As a longtime advocate for simplifying the oil and gas industry's environmental compliance, Haunschild is more than a voice in the wilderness. Over the years, his lobbying efforts (on behalf of all the companies hamstrung in their best-faith attempts to comply) have succeeded in getting regulations changed to a more common-sense and doable approach, with a resulting savings by the industry of approximately two billion dollars.

          Notes Haunschild, "These software advances have essentially been brought about by the ballooning cycle of new regulations which are convoluted, confusing and frequently overlapping."  As a result, company personnel continually find themselves having to literally pull all these regulations off the shelf and laboriously read through each and every one.  Then they have to set up separate systems for all the different compliance aspects, from permits to audits. Concludes Haunschild,   "This never-ending cycle deluges the regulated

organizations with a tremendous amount to keep up with and also potentially boxes them in with significant liabilities. And, in trying to figure everything out and honestly comply, it often still doesn't make sense."

          In the midst of this available evergreen technology, upstream and downstream companies have contrasting opinions about the best response to the compliance challenge. For example, upstream views its situation as one with many sites and few requirements at each site, whereas downstream, such as at a refinery, sees its situation as having many different requirements at a smaller number of locations.

Realistically, whether the compliance is upstream or downstream should be a moot point. At any given time, an array of environmental compliance requirements must be dealt with and a company's compliance can be more effectively managed and simplified through new technology than previously. Additionally, software refinements are focusing on systematizing or "profiling" various parts of compliance so that the entire process will be no more cumbersome than pulling an "EZ" form with user-friendly instructions and quickly filling it out.

Meanwhile, as more companies take the shortest distance between two points and adopt the evergreen technology, they are leveraging the following:

• - automatic updates of local, state, federal and international regulations
• - single repository for all a company's EH&S regulations, permits and company policies
• - flexible configuration
• - Perpetual Compliance Assurance^TM and Perpetual Audit^TM
• - fully populated and ready for immediate use

Adds Haunschild, "When companies are facing yet another hurdle in environmental compliance, the issue is not whether they should add more people to deal with the needless complexity and confusion.  It's about simplifying the entire process so that anyone with a computer mouse, software and common-sense can do it."

For more information, see http://www.argentinc.com

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