Our safety goal at Shell is to achieve no harm and no leaks across all of our operations. We refer to this as our Goal Zero ambition. We approach safety across the areas of personal, process and transportation safety (for more on road safety, see “Road safety”). In 2014, we achieved our best ever safety performance record. (See “Safety performance”).
We apply consistent standards around the world to which everyone must comply – whether they work in a refinery, on a drilling rig or in an office. These can be found in our HSSE & SP Control Framework. They describe what is required to maintain the safety of facilities that we operate, throughout their life cycle from design, construction and operation to decommissioning.
All Shell employees and contractors, and those at joint ventures we operate, must follow our safety rules, intervene in unsafe situations, and respect our neighbours and the environment.
Personal safety
7Years since we first introduced Goal Zero
5Years since we first introduced the 12 Life-Saving Rules
2014Our best ever safety performance
To meet our safety goal, it is critical that we maintain a culture where our employees and contractors understand their own role in making Shell a safe place to work. In 2014, we reinforced the importance of the role of leaders to instil a culture of safety across Shell. We want our workforce to feel looked after and motivated. This helps to ensure they understand and minimise the safety risks associated with their work. We expect people to take personal responsibility for their own safety and intervene to protect others.
Each employee and contractor must also adhere to our mandatory 12 Life-Saving Rules that cover the most critical safety risks. Since their implementation in 2009, there has been a notable reduction in the number of fatalities in our operations. We reinforced these Life-Saving Rules during 2014 through a campaign involving all Shell employees and major contractors.
Our annual global Safety Day is an opportunity for all employees and contractors to spend the day sharing ideas, best practice and planning ways to improve our performance in safety. We also have annual CEO awards to recognise outstanding HSSE & SP performance. (See “Contractors, suppliers & joint ventures”).
External opinion
“The Energy Institute (EI) in the UK promotes sound science and develops knowledge, skills and good practice in energy management. Shell is an important and long-standing partner in helping the EI achieve this.
One result of our collaboration is our ability to communicate knowledge that has been developed within Shell to a wider audience. For example, the Hearts and Minds toolkit, created by Shell to help all employees to manage health, safety and environment is now available to wider industry through the EI website. A willingness to collaborate and share knowledge is an essential element in our relationship.”
Louise Kingham,
Chief Executive, Energy Institute, London, UK
Process safety
Process safety is making sure the right precautions are in place to prevent unplanned releases of hydrocarbons and chemicals. We seek to ensure that our facilities are well designed, inspected, maintained and operated.
Shell has defined global technical safety standards for all projects and facilities. These are based on industry standards as well as best practice. If an incident takes place, we learn from the outcomes and embed any new knowledge into our technical safety standards and practices.
We ensure that plans are in place and adequate resources are maintained for responding to incidents, such as spills, fires and explosions. We routinely practise and review our emergency response plans for potential incidents in exercises with the local services and regulatory agencies that would be involved if an incident took place. This helps to test and improve our plans.
Our ability to manage oil spills has been enhanced by our global response network that can attend to an oil spill anywhere in the world. We also have a global centre that tests our oil spill response capabilities.
Raising industry standards
Shell is committed to improving the safety performance of the energy industry. For example, we have a partnership with the Energy Institute (EI), based in the UK where we share our safety experience with other operators in the energy industry. Together, Shell and the EI have advanced research on organisational safety culture, safety leadership and learning from incidents. To read more about our collaborations, see “Collaborations”.
Joint ventures
We often work in joint ventures with national and international energy companies. When we operate the venture we apply Shell standards that cover HSSE & SP. The standards for these joint ventures also include our Shell General Business Principles and the Code of Conduct. Where we are not the operator and have no controlling interest we encourage our partners to apply materially equivalent standards.
