The future of safety in the oil and gas industry
Stephenie De NichiloSantos, 60 Flinders Street, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia. Email: Stephenie.de.nichilo@santos.com
The APPEA Journal 58(2) 541-544 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ17235
Accepted: 6 March 2018 Published: 28 May 2018
Abstract
A focus on safety is at the heart of oil and gas work practices. Often the number one objective for companies operating in the oil and gas industry is to ensure everyone goes home from work without injury or illness. Industry has historically held a view that best practice in safety is demonstrated if a workplace has an absence of accidents or when injury rates are reduced to zero. However, research has shown that this approach limits the ability to develop a resilient safety culture.
Santos has established a future view of safety and developed a new 3-year strategy that has been built around six fundamental safety principles. Safety initiatives that are designed to embed the safety principles have commenced, and, as a result, safety conversations in the workplace are changing from injury rates and statistics to a focus on the prevention of harm, effectiveness of critical controls for high-risk exposures, learning and workforce leadership and risk competency.
Keywords: critical controls, culture, high-risk exposures, leadership, learning, reduce harm, risk competency, safety principles, safety strategy.
Stephenie (Steph) De Nichilo is the Head of Safety and Security at Santos. Steph is a passionate safety leader who recently led the transformation of Santos’ safety operations across the entire business. Steph commenced work at Santos in 2002 and before taking the role of Head of Safety and Security, she was the Plant Manager at Santos’ Moomba Facility in the Cooper Basin. During her tenure in this role, Steph significantly improved safety, and operational and financial performance of the plant. |
