BUSINESS WIRE--International energy company Statoil has partnered with SINTEF, Scandinavia's largest independent research organization, and Nacre, part of Sperian Hearing Protection LLC and developers of award-winning intelligent hearing protection and communication technology, to create the next generation of intelligent hearing protection and communication technologies for use in the offshore oil and gas industry.

Noise-induced hearing loss is the world's most prevalent and permanent occupational disease. Workers on offshore oil platforms and other extreme environments face the risk of not only permanent hearing loss from exposures to high levels of hazardous noise over extended periods of time, but also challenges in maintaining adequate levels of speech communication and situational awareness, which are essential to maintaining safety.

There are two main objectives to the Statoil/SINTEF/Nacre partnership:

• Develop new intelligent hearing protection technologies to eradicate noise-induced hearing loss among workers on offshore oil and gas platforms;
• Establish new methods and solutions to facilitate reliable spoken communication and situational awareness in high-noise work environments.

"This project aligns well with Statoil's commitment to preventing accidents and our goal of zero personal injuries on the job," says Eli Aamot, vice president for the research program at Statoil. "This is a very important step towards gaining full control of noise exposure for our workers on offshore platforms and providing them with advanced hearing protection and communication solutions that will help keep them safe."

The partnership will harness SINTEF and Nacre's success in intelligent hearing protection and communication technologies, including the QUIETPRO(R) intelligent hearing system. QUIETPRO is deployed operationally around the globe, including U.S., NATO and Scandinavian armed forces.

"SINTEF is committed to technology for a better society and has a rich history of scientific research and development of intelligent hearing protection and situational awareness solutions," says Dr. Odd Kr. Pettersen, research director at SINTEF. "This partnership will help solve the challenge workers experience in extreme noise environments and protect them from hazardous noise in a more innovative way."

"Nacre's QUIETPRO has been successfully deployed in some of the harshest and most challenging noise environments worldwide," says Chris Humphrey, vice president and general manager for Sperian Hearing Protection, LLC, consisting of Nacre and Howard Leight®. "We are delighted to be working with Statoil and SINTEF on this important project, and building upon the QUIETPRO hearing protection and communication platform to provide new and innovative hearing safety solutions for the oil and gas industry."