ANALYSIS OF INCONSISTENCIES AND REDUNDANCY OF FEDERAL STANDARDS AND REGULATIONS IN THE FIELD OF INDUSTRIAL SAFETY FOR PUMP AND COMPRESSOR EQUIPMENT

Abstract

The expanding legislative framework can create an excessive burden in the form of legal conflicts or impossible requirements. Oil and gas companies in the Russian Federation face a number of legal conflicts related to technical regulations. These problems create barriers to the modernization of oil refineries and the implementation of new technologies. This is most clearly reflected in the industrial safety assessment process. Expert organizations refuse to approve the assessment, citing regulations that emerged as a result of the regulatory guillotine. However, the refinery did not allocate funds for such modernization, since, according to current State Standards, this equipment fully complies with industrial safety requirements, and, as a rule, the law does not have retroactive effect, as stated in the standards themselves. For example, current requirements apply to both reconstructed and new equipment. This paper examines and analyzes the most pressing legal conflicts and issues related to the applicability of federal norms and regulations in industrial safety requirements for pumping and compressor equipment and proposes solutions. The emphasis is on the applicability of the new legislation (the purpose of which was to ease the burden on businesses) to pumping and compressor equipment that was in use before the regulatory guillotine. The aim is to propose a solution to eliminate legal conflicts and the inapplicability of legislation to pumping and compressor equipment. We believe that the fundamental industrial safety requirements for pumping and compressor equipment arose from the European Standard of July 1, 1998, CEN-EN 809 «Pumps and Pump Units for Liquids – Common Safety Requirements», which states: "This European Standard is not applicable to pumps and pump units manufactured before the date of publication of this European Standard». State Standard 31839-2012 «Pumps and Pumping Units for Pumping Liquids. General Safety Requirements», which we believe is based on the European Standard, has a similar wording, namely, «This standard does not apply to pumps and pumping units manufactured before the date of introduction of this standard». Rostekhnadzor Order No. 533, like State Standard 31839-2012, has a paragraph 5.7.17, but unlike the European Standard, the Russian Standard does not include a note stating that this requirement applies to pumps manufactured after December 15, 2020.