Safety drill on a North Sea platform, UK.
Preventing incidents and managing risks are critical to our business, and to the safety of the communities who live near our operations. We continue to learn from our experience to improve the way we operate our facilities.
Shell takes a twofold approach to potential incidents that could harm our employees and contractors, our neighbours or the environment. We identify and assess risks that could lead to an incident, and take the necessary steps to reduce or eliminate them. At the same time, we prepare for and are ready to respond to an incident in the event that one occurs. We have multiple recovery measures in place to minimise impact on people and the environment. Our staff prepare and practise emergency response actions to incidents such as an oil spill or a fire. To continually improve our approach, we work closely with local emergency response crews and government organisations to regularly test our response plans and procedures.
We responded rapidly and decisively to protect our neighbours and the environment following incidents that occurred in 2011. A major leak during the loading of an oil tanker at the Bonga field off Nigeria was stopped quickly. Almost all the oil evaporated or was dispersed using aircraft and vessels, with no lasting harm to the environment. In Singapore, we worked with local firefighters to extinguish a large fire at our refinery with minimal harm done to people or the environment. We thoroughly investigate all incidents to learn from their causes, and how we responded, to improve our safety performance.
