  The problem of the line intensities -- oxygen abundance calibration has been
considered. We confirm the idea of McGaugh (1991) that the strong oxygen lines
([OII] 3727, 3729 and [OIII] 4959, 5007) contain the necessary information for
determination of accurate abundances in low-metallicity (and may be also in
high-metallicity) HII regions. It has been found that the excitation parameters
p3 or p2 (which are defined here as contributions of the radiation in [OIII]
4959, 5007 lines and in [OII] 3727, 3729 lines to the "total" oxygen radiation
respectively) allow to take into account the variations in R23 values among HII
regions with a given oxygen abundance. Based on this fact a new way of the
oxygen abundance determination in HII regions has been constructed and
corresponding relations between line intensities and the oxygen abundance have
been derived empirically using the available oxygen abundances determined via
measurement of temperature-sensitive line ratios.
  In parallel a new R23 calibration has been derived on the base of recent data
and compared to previous calibrations. For oxygen-rich HII regions the present
R23 calibration is close to that of Edmunds and Pagel (1984): their calibration
has the same slope but is shifted towards higher oxygen abundances by around
0.07 dex as compared to the present calibration.
