About Us
Mission Statement
The Gulf Coast Safety and Training Group (GCS&TG) is a nonprofit (501-c6) corporation organized to promote the advancement of safety, health, environmental stewardship and safety training in the oil and/or gas exploration, production and transmission industry. The group is dedicated to providing its membership with educational and networking opportunities to accomplish our common goals to share ideas, discuss and seek solutions to identified safety, health, environmental and training needs.
Meeting Dates
Jan. 11, 2019
March 8, 2019
May 10, 2019
July 12, 2019
Sept. 13, 2019
Nov. 8, 2019
Membership
Member - A member is engaged in the broad practice of safety, health, environmental and/or training as their primary responsibility for their employer. The member shall be employed in the oil and/or gas exploration, production or transmission industry, or be employed by a company servicing the oil industry, whose own employees are exposed to the same hazards as the oil industry worker. Sales and marketing representatives do not qualify for membership.
Site Content
OFFICERS
President
Maria Champagne, CSP
Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation
President Elect
Buddy White
Stallion Oilfield Services
Secretary
Rick Keen, CSP
Danos
Treasurer
Gene Barfield, CSP
GEB Consulting, Incorporated
GCSTG Corporate Administrator
L. J. “Jim” Gunter, CSP
J. G. Safety & Training Specialists
COMMITTEES
Crawfish Boil / Membership
Gene Barfield, CSP
GEB Consulting, Incorporated
Nominations & Elections
Maria Champagne, CSP
Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation
Quality
Nic McCormic
DUTY Management Systems
Regulatory Affair
Laurie Knape, CSP
Avetta
SafeGulf
Buddy White
L. J. “Jim” Gunter, CSP
Speaker Arrangements
Buddy White
Stallion Oilfield Services
Scholarship
Jim Gunter, CSP
J. G. Safety & Training Specialists, LLC
Science Fair – Chairman
Leonard Nederveld, CSP
Safety Consultant
Lafayette Area Science Fair
Danny Viator
Safety Consultant
Houma Area Science Fair
Bill Womack
Anadarko Petroleum Corporation
Houston Area Science
Maria Champagne, CSP
Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation
New Orleans Area Science Fair
Kent Bordelon
Absolute Safety Consulting
History
The Gulf Coast Safety & Training Group was founded in 1972. The OSHA act had been signed and oil companies were striving to find efficient methods to comply with the new rules outline in the Code of Federal Register 1910. To better understand these new regulations a small group of oil and gas safety professional began meeting during lunch in a downtown café in the heart of New Orleans. There were several of the major oil companies located in the New Orleans area and all of them were concerned with how these new laws were going to work and how the oil companies would comply with them. This group of safety professionals made some great strides in setting up education and training programs to assist their fellow professionals with understanding of these new rules. The group continued to meet almost every week for several months to develop and share new or revised safety policies. As time passed the group had developed several innovative programs that were getting recognition from other safety professionals in other parts of the Louisiana. In Lafayette Louisiana there were also several major and independent oil companies and they too were working on developing methods of compliance with the new OSHA laws. These two small groups discussed getting together in New Orleans to review the programs that each company had developed. Soon others in Houston heard about the meetings and asked to if they could be a part of this working group of safety professionals.
As the Group continued to grow in size it was evident that the group needed to become more structured. A chairman was appointed and formal meeting dates were established. The group had been meeting in New Orleans but as more safety professionals from the west began to participate the need to meet in a more central location was needed to reduce the travel distance to meetings. It was agreed to schedule meetings in three major cities where most of the oil companies had offices. So the meetings began to rotate between New Orleans, Lafayette and Houston. The meetings moved from the café and restaurant settings to the conference rooms of the oil companies. As these safety professional began to become more educated on the new OSHA rules they began to work on other regulatory agency requirements utilizing the sharing of techniques and best practices to increase their knowledge and skills at preventing employee injuries, education employees on their safety roles and responsibilities and development of training programs that could affect positive changes in performance.
In 1979 the Group elected its first President and officers to assist in organizing the Group into a more structured group. In 1995 the Group signed its Articles of Incorporation as a not-for-profit 501-C-3 organization. The Group has a membership base of approximately 375 members with the highest membership total at 469 members. The merger of many of the major oil companies has streamed lined the organization to its present membership numbers.
The Gulf Coast Safety & Training Group has many notable accomplishments in its 30 plus year history. The Group were organizers in founding the Marine Survival Training Center, the development of Industry Day which is a forum for our regulatory agencies to present information on existing and pending regulations, the formation of a Standardized Training Plan to meet the requirements of the Minerals Management Service Subpart O requirements for performance based training in Production Safety Systems Training, industry forum to assist in meeting the Department of Transportation, Pipeline Operators Qualification regulation and the formation of an annual Safety Conference are some of the more recent accomplishments.
A short history compiled by Gene Barfield - 5/10/2005