Safety is always our number one priority, in good economic times and bad.
INJURIES – Total Recordable Case Frequency
Per million working hours
We aim to have zero fatalities and no incidents that put our people, neighbours and facilities at risk. We are making progress towards that aim, but still have some way to go.
SAFETY PERFORMANCE
We are deeply saddened that 26 people (two employees and 24 contractors) lost their lives working for Shell in 2008. That was five more than in 2007, based on our updated scope of reporting (see Measuring our performance). Of these fatalities, nine happened on the road (see Road safety). A further 10 occurred in Nigeria, where three people were killed as a result of security incidents and seven contractors died in one tragic incident when repairing a pipeline.
OUR REQUIREMENTS
- Shell HSSE policy and commitment define our goal: no harm to people.
- Company-wide health, safety, security and environment standards outline the requirements to get there.
- Process safety and road safety requirements set a consistent company-wide approach and allow us to check compliance.
- Standards apply to all operations we control or operate and to all staff and contractors at those operations. We expect operations we don’t control and suppliers to apply these or equivalent standards.
We continued to improve our injury rate (the number of incidents like slips, trips and falls per million working hours). We also reduced the number of process safety incidents.
We are maintaining our strong focus on safety and following through with our efforts to strengthen our safety culture. In July 2009, we expect to launch our 12 Life Saving Rules: clear and simple requirements covering the activities of highest safety risk. Following these rules is already mandatory for employees and contractors. The consequences for not following them – maximum appropriate disciplinary action for employees, or removal from Shell sites for contractors – will be strictly enforced at all our operations. We are also continuing to tighten the way we manage process safety, and reduce the number of deaths and injuries on the road.
process safety
Process safety means making sure our facilities are well designed, safely operated and properly maintained. In 2008, we continued implementing our new company-wide process safety standards. Our upstream business finished a three-year long assessment of its facilities. Internal independent auditors reviewed sites in over 2,000 locations – from small pumping stations to large gas processing plants – to see how well equipment was being maintained. By the end of 2008, we had completed nearly three-quarters of the changes the review identified and closed out all of its high-risk findings.
SMALL CHANGES, BIG DIFFERENCES
Our company-wide Safety Day in June 2008 showed how everyone in Shell has a role to play in improving our safety performance. All Shell employees and contractors who work with us were asked to make a personal pledge, committing to do at least one small thing in 2008 to help make Shell a safer place to work. Over 100,000 pledges were received and ranged from giving more safety talks on site and never compromising safety to reduce costs, to always being aware of emergency procedures and doing better route planning before driving.
