Process safety

Our Approach
Effective process safety management leads to the prevention of uncontrolled releases of hydrocarbons, chemicals, and other substances.
Failure to contain these substances can lead to significant incidents such as fires and explosions, with potential for serious injuries and fatalities, widespread environmental impacts, and property damage. Our process safety management practices focus on reducing risks and incidents through OIMS, including facility design and operation. We continuously seek to improve these areas by learning from incidents and near-misses in our own operations and across our industry. We are committed to learning lessons from the tragic Deepwater Horizon incident and are working to further improve prevention, containment and response plans.

At our facilities, we focus on best practices in design, mechanical integrity, and upgrades using advanced technologies. In our operations, we focus on training employees in process safety and effective procedures, including best practices for our higher-risk activities, such as start-up and shut-down of operations when maintenance is conducted.

What we are doing
In 2010, we continued a program for safe operations training for process leaders. The four-day course was taken by about 50 Downstream personnel. We also continued our focus on improving facilities and risk management processes and establishing clearer roles and responsibilities at our facilities. In 2010, we implemented new process safety metrics to enhance our ability to learn from all levels of incidents and continued to evaluate recent best practices on fatigue management.

Based on industry experience and best practices, we recognize the importance of high quality pre-job planning to maintain process safety. In 2010, the Upstream business fully launched a new Work Management System that better integrates key planning tools such as work permits, confined space entry documents and job safety analyses.