Focus on safety
The Stanlow refinery has been lauded by the chair of the UK's Health and
Safety Executive, Judith Hackitt, who visited it last year. The refinery has
registered a new site record of 10 million hours no lost time incident (LTI).
Ms Hackitt also praised the work taking place at the refinery to train young
apprentices, whose work will engage them in some tasks where health and safety
really can be a matter of life or death.
She said that it was crucial that the risks involved in working on hazardous processes were properly understood and praised Stanlow's approach to this. She stressed that health and safety should not be seen as an add-on but as a fundamental part of doing a job and went on to say that this was a key element of apprenticeship training, to ensure that young apprentices learned how to carry out their roles safely and efficiently.
Indeed, Essar Energy puts the health and safety of its employees and contractors at the top of its agenda and aims to build this focus into its corporate culture. The key objective continues to be to build such a focus on health and safety into its employee culture from the top down, thus maximizing the likelihood of potential problems being dealt with proactively before they cause accidents. 'Safety Champions' have been nominated across the business to promote the safety message, along with the introduction of various safety awards.
Integrated success
Essar Energy, which has $17 billion of assets across the power and oil and gas
industries, operates the Vadinar refinery, the second-largest private sector
refinery in India. Besides Stanlow, it also has a 50 per cent interest in the
Kenya Petroleum Refinery. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
In India, it operates its oil and gas business through Essar Oil, which is listed
on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange of India.
Producing about 15 per cent of the country's transport fuels, together
with large volumes of diesel and jet fuel, refined fuel from Stanlow is distributed
across the UK by road and pipeline.
The Stanlow refinery now gives Essar Energy direct access to the UK market. It is also aligned with Essar Energy's strategy to provide options for the export of high-value fuel products from its refinery at Vadinar, in Gujarat state, India.
With the business strategy plotted out, the Stanlow facility seems well-placed to play a significant role in Essar Energy achieving its larger global plans.
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