The recent European Norm 17975 addresses ‘grey zone’ energy-related risks during machine and pipeline interventions and proposes a task based framework for safe and efficient work. The norm can further increase the safety and efficiency of Lockout/Tagout programmes in a wide range of industries

A task based safety framework

10%-15% of fatal workplace accidents in Europe’s industries are related to maintenance operations according to data from the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work. Many of these result from underestimating risks involved in specific tasks such as machine greasing, sensor adjustment or a quick cleaning that are not always seen as ‘maintenance activities’. They are kept outside the scope of Lockout/Tagout programmes even though workers are exposed to similar risks. European Norm (EN) 17975 addresses these grey zone risks by using task based risk analyses as a starting point.

“EN 17975 does not require an energy zero state for every machine or pipeline during every intervention”, said Mustafa Ekseri, EMEA Safety Engineer at Brady Corporation, a supplier of quality Lockout/Tagout solutions.

“Not having to halt an entire production line for every intervention can save valuable time - if it is possible in a safe way. To achieve this, EN 17975 proposes a layered approach based on risks related to specific tasks on specific machines and pipes. These risks are to be highlighted in a risk analysis. In absence of a risk analysis, machine zero energy states remain the safety standard. In that sense, EN 17975 builds on ISO 14118 by providing more options for compliance with European workplace safety legislation. Impacted activities can be defined using EN 17007 and EN 13306 and are also listed in EN 17975.”

Risk analysis guidance

With machine and pipe intervention safety hinging on identified risks, industries will need thorough task-based risk analyses. Guidance can be found in other standards. “ISO 12100, primarily intended for machinebuilders to take into account their customers’ workplace safety, can be used as a basis for machine intervention risk analyses. ISO 31000 provides guidelines for managing risk in general, including 8 core principles, a framework and a process.”

“EN 17975 proposes 6 steps to analyse the risk in any machine intervention task, starting with the identification of the task, all the way to a feedback loop for continuous improvement. That includes a thorough energy source inventory and identification. The standard also requires a risk analysis update before applying Standard Operating Procedures, and during maintenance activities. In addition, EN 17975 advocates clearly identified degraded situations that may deviate from the standard risk assessment.”

Task-based isolation

EN 17975 uses a task based risk approach that was captured earlier in the French norm X60-400. Based on a task risk analysis, the European Norm proposes four types of risk control processes:

• Neutralisation: a process that, through design of the control systems, shuts down an item of equipment so that a list of predetermined tasks can be conducted in safety.
• Standard isolation: a process that results in the removal – by locking in position a single or double isolating device – of all energies & fluids where the presence, accidental retention, unexpected appearance does not have hazardous consequences for workers, the environment, and items.
• Reinforced isolation: a process that results in the removal – by separation or by a combination of isolating and opening devices (e.g. valve, tap, etc.) – of all energies & fluids where the presence, accidental retention, unintended appearance does not have hazardous consequences for workers, the environment, and items.
• Specific provisions: a process that results in the implementation of organisational or technical measures enabling observation, diagnostics, testing activities and work on settings for the item in service to be carried out safely, with energies & fluids present.

“All four risk control processes require an inventory of energies and fluids per machine with their effects on people, property and the environment, a mapping of the isolating devices and an identification sheet of energies, fluids, components and lockout devices. It also requires a shared risk assessment grid and process. EN 17975 describes the aim, application conditions, type of activities and other relevant factors for each of the 4 risk control processes.”

Lockout/Tagout guidance

Complying with EN 17975 requires a human, organisational and technical approach, all of which are outlined in the norm.

EN 17975 identifies 9 steps to carry out reinforced and standard isolations by Lockout/Tagout of energies and fluids. Steps involve separation of energies and fluids, isolation, lock out, tagout, identification, dispersion of energies, check, contain and inspect. “The ‘check’ step in EN17975 is already widely known in the industry as the ‘Tryout’ in Lockout/Tagout/Tryout or LoToTo. It is a vital step to help make sure that measures are implemented correctly and that they are still effective.”

“Brady safety engineers can help industries implement isolations by writing machine- and task specific lockout procedures. These can include all nine steps from EN 17975, and they must be based on company task risk assessments. In addition, we can offer the right Lockout/Tagout tools for procedure compliance, set up a hands-on demo by locking out a specific machine, and provide training to relevant employees. Alternatively, a gap analysis can be made that identifies steps to be taken from the current state to arrive at compliant, best practice Lockout/Tagout.”

Impact on existing safety programmes

EN 17975 is not a legal requirement. “The standard however considerably facilitates compliance with EU workplace safety legislation. It sets a clear expectation for any machine intervention: if no risk analysis for the task is available, a machine zero energy state is required.”

“Because many safety programmes already involve complete machine isolation from every energy source, for every task, it is likely that the new norm will impact existing Lockout/Tagout-programmes. Based on the risk analysis, machine zero energy states may not be needed for every type of intervention.”

“Adversely, some tasks that were considered ‘small and safe’ may unveil more risk after a thorough risk analysis. This means a single machine could have several Lockout/Tagout procedures. The right procedure can be included with, or communicated via a QR-code on a work permit for example.”

“Some forms of automated safety may not be sufficient for every task without an underlying risk analysis. Take a safety cage for example, equipped with sensors that deactivate moving machine parts the moment someone enters the cage. Do these nullify any residual energy that may pose a risk? Is gravitational, and other potential energy taken into account? The goal of EN 17975 is to prevent accidents, and to avoid a false sense of safety that does not provide any real protection.”

With the European Norm 17975, industries in Europe can now rely on a common standard for compliance with EU and national safety legislation that involve risk control processes of energies and fluids in maintenance activities.

Get the Brady EN 17975 Lockout/Tagout webinar recording

Go from zero machine energy to zero intervention risk with task based Lockout/Tagout, driven by the European Norm 17975. Get your copy of the  EN 17975 webinar from an experienced, worldwide Lockout/Tagout solution provider.

Discover more about:

• the unique European framework EN 17975 provides to achieve safety and efficiency
• how EN 17975 focuses on task-based safety, rather than machine zero energy states
• how EN 17975 can be used to address ‘Grey zone’ risks
• Four risk-based energy isolation levels presented by EN 17975
• Six steps to control risks
• Lockout/Tagout procedure writing
• Lockout/Tagout device and padlock types

Get the webinar recording now >

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BRADY Middle East

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Mustafa Ekseri works as a Safety Engineer for Brady Europe, Middle East and Africa. He is involved in planning, writing procedures and rolling out Lockout/Tagout programmes at manufacturing and logistics workplaces throughout Europe. He is a Prevention Advisor Level 2, a Belgian legally regulated curriculum that equips professionals to handle safety and health risks in businesses.

The Strait of Hormuz crisis shows how vulnerable the supply chain is to geopolitics, making agility and resilience impossible to ignore, writes Nayef Bou Chaaya, vice president, Middle East, Turkey & Central Asia at AVEVA

The oil industry began the year determined to boost crude production to cover a looming global supply-demand gap. Yet on February 28, that challenge became far more acute than anyone could have predicted.

The onset of the US-Israel-Iran war and the ensuing Strait of Hormuz crisis has completely changed the mood inside the oil industry. The world is facing prolonged higher-for-longer oil prices where every barrel suddenly matters more, and every operational inefficiency starts eating directly into profits.

At the peak of the disruption, the market was dealing with the loss of around 12 million barrels per day of crude supply, according to Rystad Energy. That is roughly 11% of total global oil demand. On an annualized basis, it equates to more than four billion barrels of supply either trapped, delayed or prevented from reaching the market efficiently.

Oil prices had jumped from around USUS$80 per barrel before the conflict to above US$100. Some analysts project prices could still edge to $180 by the end of the year. That has created a rare profit window for producers outside the Middle East, who are trying to strike while the iron is hot and get as much as possible out of existing infrastructure while conditions remain favourable.

This is not just about drilling more wells

As time is of the essence – both for countries keen to get more supply and for oil majors who want to make the most of high prices – the focus is now on optimising every drop.

Small improvements in uptime, throughput or refinery performance that might once have had limited commercial impact can now translate into millions of dollars in additional revenue. A compressor failure or unplanned shutdown that was once a routine maintenance headache is now enormously costly.

This is where predictive analytics can have an outsized impact, enabling producers to constantly monitor assets and catch problems before they escalate into equipment failure or shutdowns. The current geopolitical environment has only turbocharged this shift, accelerating the move towards industrial AI and integrated operational systems across the sector.

Rystad Energy estimates AI and digital technologies will create close to US$500 billion in cumulative value for exploration and production (E&P) companies between 2026 and 2030.

Not all crude is equal

Refiners are also dealing with another major challenge: crude availability has become much more unpredictable.

Refineries use blends and slates sourced from multiple regions, which all have different properties and refining characteristics. Texas crude behaves differently from Saudi crude. Saudi crude behaves differently from Abu Dhabi crude. Venezuelan crude behaves differently again.

In stable market conditions, those crude slates are relatively predictable. However, refiners are now forced to change their crude oil slate because certain crude streams are no longer accessible. This creates a much more complicated optimisation problem.

Historically, engineering teams would run a limited number of operational scenarios manually. Now industrial AI systems can run thousands of crude blend combinations simultaneously while incorporating crude prices, refined product prices, electricity costs, operational constraints and regional market demand – determining in near real-time exactly which combination will generate the highest profitability possible.

AI augments human strategy

Importantly, the industry is not treating AI as some magical black box replacing engineering expertise. Inside oil and gas, there is still a very strong understanding that AI is only as good as the underlying engineering models feeding it.

AI is extremely good at interpreting data, however, the actual engineering calculations still need to come from first-principles engineering models and thermodynamics.

I like to use a comparative aviation analogy. For example, let’s say passengers boarded a plane and someone announced that AI would be flying the entire flight. Most people would probably get off right away.

Yet, modern aviation already relies heavily on automation. Pilots still handle take-off, landing, direction, speed and oversight while automated systems manage most of the journey in between. Industrial AI is evolving in a similar manner.

Human operators still define objectives, constraints and desired outcomes while AI handles huge amounts of analytical work and scenario modelling faster than humans can manually. This practice matters in a conservative industry where operational mistakes carry enormous financial and safety consequences.

Counting the cost

Production accounting systems are also becoming strategically more important because relatively small discrepancies in incoming or outgoing shipments can seriously affect margins when oil prices are high. If a company purchases one million barrels but only receives 990,000, the financial implications suddenly become much more significant.

In sum, what this all means is that the market is increasingly rewarding operational integration as much as production scale.

While longer term, the industry will continue investing in energy diversification, right now the challenge is more immediate: keeping the world moving during one of the most volatile commodity environments in decades – and making every barrel count.

No one knows when this window will close – or when the next one will open.

At the Energy Intelligence Forum in London, where energy security and energy resilience was at the top of the agenda, Aramco’s CEO Amin H. Nasser underlined the critical importance of Middle East oil and gas supplies, the need for deeper resilience, and why energy resilience and energy security should be a shared responsibility between producers and consumers

The disruption to flows through the Strait of Hormuz has exposed how deeply energy security, economic security, and geopolitical events are connected, Nasser commented.

He noted that at the beginning of the crisis there were almost 10bn barrels of global oil stocks, since when nearly 3bn barrels of gross oil supply has been lost – around half the crude and products that would normally have moved through the Strait of Hormuz over the same period.

“Existing buffers have cushioned the blow and bought time, but they are finite. And while the squeeze on crude is serious, refined fuel prices have risen even more sharply.

“Emergency reserves might buy us a winter. They cannot fix long-term supply.

“Until Hormuz fully re-opens and confidence returns, the crude reality is that pressure at both ends of the barrel will intensify.”

Replenishing inventories while meeting demand could take up to two years, he added. The supply resilience cushion is “scarily thin.”

“The world has been reminded that no energy source, route, or system is risk-free. This crisis has raised the risk baseline. And that higher risk must be matched by deeper resilience, built across multiple layers.”

Deeper resilience

This is exemplified in Aramco’s resilience approach, which includes separating critical facilities; building in backup equipment; planning for maintenance; emergency command and firefighting excellence; rapid damage assessment; restoring damaged infrastructure at pace and investing in its people.

Reducing dependence on chokepoints is also important. Aramco is studying additional routes for crude exports, while exploring more overseas storage to help cover short-term disruptions.

Emphasising the critical importance of Middle East oil and gas supplies, Nasser highlighted the need to re-assess oil policies to ensure they remain aligned with the strategic goal of long-term energy security.

“Because energy security and resilience is a shared responsibility between producers and consumers,” he stressed. “This crisis is much more than an energy supply shock in Hormuz,” he added, citing the attacks on facilities and shipping.

“The international community must stand together to safeguard the free flow of energy and goods.”

Oil and gas infrastructure is a “collective necessity for producers and consumers alike,” he said, urging collaboration to minimise and adapt to shocks.

“We can collaborate on emergency response; better supply planning; refinery and petrochemicals flexibility; joint stockpiling; and long-term relationships. And stronger finances, supply chains, and cybersecurity are a must. “

Nasser concluded with a plea to “end the era of cyclical under-investment”, highlighting the integral importance of resilience.

“This crisis has finally exposed the false choice between energy security, affordability and sustainability.

“They are inseparable, and the future energy system must be built on all three. Middle East oil and gas remain central to that system for decades to come. Strengthening the resilience of these vital supplies is therefore a global strategic necessity."