17 May 2018

Woodside Energy has won the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association Safety Excellence Award, which recognises an outstanding contribution to safety leadership and performance in the Australian oil and gas industry.

APPEA Board member and General Manager Australia, BHP Billiton Petroleum, Graham Salmond announced the award at Wednesday night’s APPEA 2018 Conference Dinner in Adelaide.

“Woodside believes continuous improvement in its health and safety performance is essential to its business success and growth,” Mr Salmond said.

“The company is continuing its strong focus on process safety and asset management, and is increasing its use of data analytics to provide insights to enhance decision making and systematically minimise risks.”

Woodside has a wide range of assets at varying life-cycle changes. It is emphasising process safety and asset management to manage integrity across its portfolio to prevent a loss of containment.

“Woodside’s process safety management framework ensures that all its assets and business functions have a standardised, globally applicable approach to managing process safety,” Mr Salmond said.

“Woodside has strengthened its process safety management capability by collaborating with contractors and using a line-led, risk-based approach that stresses visible leadership and operational discipline.”

Woodside is applying IBM’s advanced data science system – Watson – to health, safety, environment and quality management. Woodside has developed one of the world’s largest commercial applications of the Watson system. Its Watson for HSEQ project is an intelligent data analysis and visualization service that can be used to quickly discover patterns and meaning in data sets. This lets users extract valuable insights from more than 30 years of corporate knowledge.

One major component of the Watson for HSEQ project is Watson for KGP, which analyses many data sources relevant to the Karratha Gas Plant (KGP).

This gives KGP operations and maintenance teams a comprehensive view of facility issues and planned maintenance and remedial work. It also identifies areas of potential risk and indications of risk severity; monitors and tracks changes over time; and identifies potential conflicts between facility issues and planned operational activities.

Uniting previously disparate date sources in this way helps manage risks and resources and enhances safety.

In 2017, an internal process safety management audit confirmed Woodside had achieved a step-change in performance. The company shares its process safety systems and lessons through industry forums and regular communication with joint venture partners. Download PDF

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Matthew DomanMobile: 0421 888 858Email: >[email protected]