Security in KazMunayGas: Our way forward.

Security in KazMunayGas: Our way forward

From time to time, our industry faces with a catastrophic event that forces us to revise the approach and technology for whether we are doing business correctly. Examples are the Tengiz accident, the Piper Alpha oil platform accident in the North Sea in 1988, and the explosion on the platform that developed the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. These incidents led to a revision of the activities approach in the field of health, safety, environment, having completely changed the company’s attitude to security issues and style of management staff competencies, production reliability increase and planning systems for emergencies – everything for achievement of accident-free production.

In KazMunayGas, we are not limited to regulations and procedures, but fundamentally change the business culture when it comes to risk management in our activity, our capabilities, our technologies and our security programs. We are moving from a standards-compliant business model to a proactive one that requires common standards, processes and procedures across the company, and that is the foundation of such changes – our step forward.

After several years of data collection, we have gained an understanding of the main factors affecting the safety performance of our activity. Problems with internal procedures, training and competence of employees are the key factors that affect the reliability of our production. Having armed with new data, we are now developing the target programs to ensure reliability, which will include human factors in the modernization process.

Despite the importance of technologies designed to reduce risk, no technological innovation can solve the problem of rash solutions. We recognize that people are the determining factor. Therefore, ensuring the competence of employees becomes an integral part of employees development and we are developing more rigorous programs to prepare the next generation of leaders to the environment conditions where they are expected to manage. More than 30 years after the Tengiz incident, the safety and health systems have been improved up to the level where there is an understanding of the accidents nature and the number of incidents is at an acceptable low level. However, we will not be satisfied until the number of incidents drops to Zero.

The top management is responsible for ensuring understanding of risk and safety management processes as basics for decision-making at all levels of the organization, from procurement to production activity, and more importantly, the leaders are responsible for the right of every employee to do right and safe without fear of consequences.

Our industry is a complex, diverse and competitive business where every company, from big to small, must meet higher standards. The collaborative industry and the staff involved will be able to develop best practices, technologies and training programs to make progress on our path to accident-free production.

Sauat Mynbayev

Chairman of the Management Board

KazMunayGas NC JSC