Within the last years a number of incidents occurred in the worldwide refinery business. International benchmarks show that OMV achieves top performance figures with regard to reliability and operational unit availability as well as occupational safety. In order to further improve this position OMV requested an independent assessment by DNV.
As an integrated European oil and gas corporation, OMV has, within the past five years, become Central Europe’s leading oil and natural gas corporation.
“OMV’s strategy is to continue expanding our market position in the sectors of exploration and production, refining and marketing as well as gas,“ says Deputy Vice President Dr Dieter Tuppinger, Head of Operations at OMV’s Burghausen Refinery in Germany.
“In doing so, we plan to extract half of the crude oil that we process ourselves.
We will grow profitably, using our own resources and through selective acquisitions,” states the OMV-veteran with a background of 16 years in the company. OMV was founded in 1956 by the Austrian State and is now Austria’s largest listed company.
Dr Tuppinger: “The overall goal in 2002 was to double the safety performance results by 2008. Moreover, the goal has already been achieved in 2006. Our current ambition is to double it again by 2010.”
Strive to further reduce incidents
Within the past three years OMV has had a number of incidents at its refineries in Schwechat, Austria and Burghausen, Germany. Of 22 incidents reviewed, 11 resulted in external releases, eight of those were flammable releases, with three of them causing a fire.
“We had to discover the incidents’ causes and find out which measures we could implement in order to reduce the number and severity of any future incidents. That was when we contacted DNV, as an independent and well respected worldwide company. Within the next years OMV will invest 640 million Euros in the Burghausen refinery. Our goal is to achieve world class performance in process safety before we will commission the new investments,” emphasises Dr Tuppinger.
“We have always had a strong focus on occupational health and safety,” he says. “Nonetheless, we have to sharpen our staff awareness of process safety, which is just as important.”
Gap analyses – and a road map
DNV examined the incidents in order to assess whether they were being caused by any systematic errors. Later, a root cause analysis was conducted at the OMV refineries in Schwechat and Burghausen. DNV interviewed a number of staff at all levels of the organisation as part of this project.
Further, DNV conducted gap analyses to create a road map to improve OMV’s safety culture and tools. DNV also mapped the root causes against DNV’s well-known model of management systems of excellence, called ISRS7 - which adopts 15 management processes.
“Our experience is that DNV has its finger on the pulse worldwide. The ISRS system is based on real experiences, covering thousands of incidents, and has been used throughout the world to improve ways of avoiding incidents,” says Dr Tuppinger.
The results of the DNV analysis highlight business risks and risk evaluation, human resources, project management, risk control, asset management, and contractor and supplier management as areas for further improvement.
“The improvement projects we have now initiated will enable us to anticipate nearly everything. A total of 70 OMV staff have been allocated to follow up nine improvement projects.”
Necessary changes at all levels
“Some things have already been significantly improved. Others can be further improved quite quickly, whilst some developments may take longer. However, there is no guarantee that further incidents will not occur, as it will take time for some of the proposed changes to take effect. It is also important that the refinery staff see the desire for change, driven by senior management, and see the issues being addressed. They will also need to be encouraged to raise their levels of awareness and control whilst the changes are being implemented,” Dr Tuppinger points out.
“Unfortunately, there are also weaknesses in the contractors’ competencies. We have to check both the contractors and the quality of their work. Business is also moving ahead faster and faster.”
Communication and involvement
Internally, separate goals will be set for all departments. Moreover, communication and involvement will be two key words. “We must inform and involve the operators and the contractors, since we need their contribution.”
It will also be important to avoid losses. There is a price to be paid for non-conformance, and we have to report what is lost and why. We will communicate our findings to all our staff as part of the work of avoiding incidents and losses. The greatest challenge will be to further strengthen OMV’s safety culture, so that it is open to new ideas whilst complying with existing guidelines,” says Dr Tuppinger.