SAPREF celebrates safety milestone 
of five million hours without a lost time injury

November 22, 2002

SAPREF, southern Africa's largest crude oil refinery, yesterday celebrated a very significant safety milestone. The refinery, which is jointly owned by Shell and BP, has reached five million hours without an injury causing a lost work day. This is the second time SAPREF has reached this milestone, and is despite a major planned maintenance shutdown in July and August where more than 5000 contractors and SAPREF staff were on site. It was previously achieved in October 1996. 

Dixon Lowe, SAPREF's health, safety and environment manager, said this accomplishment was due to an outstanding effort by the whole SAPREF team and the personal commitment of everyone to safety. During the recent shutdown and major project work, efforts were also made to provide an effective and consistent safety programme for contractors. 

"This safety performance puts us up with the best refineries anywhere in the world and we are very proud to have achieved it. We are looking forward to building on this success and to reaching the incredible target of 10 million hours without a lost-time injury," Lowe said. 

He said SAPREF had implemented a best-practice incident reporting system for internal incident reporting, which allowed all staff members to share information on all types of incidents and track corrective actions to completion. This enabled detailed attention to all potential problem areas and ensured focus in areas where it is most beneficial.