The Australian oil and gas industry achieved its best occupational health and safety result on record in 2004, according to a new report from the Australian Petroleum Prod-uction and Exploration Association
The Australian oil and gas industry achieved its best occupational health and safety result on record in 2004, according to a new report from the Australian Petroleum Prod-uction and Exploration Association
With the sector’s reputation of driving labour and equipment to gain the greatest economic value, the outcome is being hailed within the industry itself, particularly since the result included a decrease in time lost to injuries despite a significant increase in total hours worked, the report says.
The oil and gas industry’s lost time injury frequency rate – with lost time injuries representing those for which a worker is unable to work at all for a period of time – has reduced substantially from levels a decade ago. The latest incident rate of 1.9 per million man hours compares with 5.8 in 1994.
APPEA chairman Reg Nelson said the latest performance report signalled a landmark for Australia’s oil and gas sector.
“Oil and gas exploration, development and production in Australia is not just about creating economic value through the provision of a reliable, competitively priced supply of energy,” he said.
“This industry also creates social value by ensuring that its operations provide the highest possible standard of worker health and safety and by ensuring that the natural environment in which we operate receives the best level of protection.”
Other industry highlights from APPEA’s health and safety report included a drop in environmental incidents overall, and an increase in negligible or low-impact incidents.
It also acknowledged APPEA-Federal Government cooperation on identifying more than 40,000 square kilometres in south-east Australia as potential marine protected areas.
APPEA said it recorded a total of 275 environmental incidents in 2004, more than half of which had “negligible or no impact on fauna, flora, habitat, aquatic ecosystem or water resources”.
In 2003, the Australian upstream petroleum industry greenhouse emissions inventory showed that, in total, there was, what APPEA calls “a significant decline” in total emis-sions over the 2002 inventory level.
Carbon dioxide emissions decreased by 2.3 per cent to 15.95 million tonnes in 2003, according to the report.
In 2003, greenhouse gas emis-sions from Australia’s upstream industry represented around 3 per cent of national greenhouse emissions, according to APPEA.
But the industry is aimed at further improvements on this measure, with support for enhanced climate modelling to assist industry decision making in relation to climate change. APPEA said it is looking into a range of approaches to achieve this, including state government proposals for an emissions trading scheme.