10-08-2015

Vadinar refinery gets best safety performance refinery of the year award

In a firm endorsement to Essar Oil’s unrelenting focus towards safety, Vadinar Refinery was recently conferred with the prestigious “Best Safety Performance Refinery of the Year 2013-14 award” by the Oil Industry Safety Directorate (OISD) for demonstrating superior overall safety performance. In addition, two Essar Oil employees, Mr. Akshay Patel and Mr. Dhaval Modh, were also conferred with the coveted Individual Safety Awards for their exemplary contribution towards preventing unsafe situations at their respective work places.

Oil Industry Safety Directorate (OISD) is a technical directorate under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas that formulates and coordinates the implementation of a series of self-regulatory measures aimed at enhancing the safety in the oil & gas industry in India.

The evaluation criteria for awards is quite stringent and is based on complexity of operations, accident free man-hours worked, volume of the products handled, direct & indirect loss due to any incident, hazard potential of the complex, no major incident during the period etc. The awards were given away in a ceremony in New Delhi by the Mr. Dharmendra Pradhan, Hon’ble Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas (MoPNG), in the presence of Mr. K D Tripathi, Secretary, MoPNG. Mr. C. Manoharan, Director – Refinery, Essar Oil received the award on behalf of Essar Oil.

Talking on Essar Oil’s safety standards, Mr. Manoharan said, “At Essar Oil, safety is absolutely on top of our priority. We take pride in our stringent safety guidelines and protocols. We encourage all employees to keep vigilant in the conduct of their duties, and continue to contribute to the health of the organization.  We regularly run safety audits, mock drills, and undertake refresher trainings so that our skills and responses remain relevant. I take this opportunity to congratulate all employees and associates for their contribution in getting this recognition. We are proud of Akshay and Dhaval for their contribution towards maintaining Essar Oil’s high safety levels.”

Salient features of Essar Oil’s Safety Management System include:
* Continuous improvement in Safety culture through employee participation, behavior based safety, critical task observations, safety near miss reporting & investigation (process and occupational near misses), process mock drills, sharing incidences through monthly HSEF timeout/ alerts, implementation of 5S Workplace management, adherence to life-saving rules, pre-startup safety review, management of change procedure, sustainability reporting and various other motivation programs.
* Process Safety Management – improvement in system integrity, operational discipline, monitoring and development of leading and lagging indicator metrics.