Safety Management
At INPEX, the overarching goal of health and safety management is to ensure that all employees at its worksites return home each day, free from injury and illness. We recognize that our employees’ physical and mental well-being is the foundation of the Company. Accordingly, we strive to provide them with a safe work environment and carry out initiatives aimed towards maintaining their good health. The safety of our employees and contractors involved in our projects as our top priority, managing health and safety risks through our HSEMS. In the course of our operations, it is imperative for the occurrence of major accidents (such as fatalities, major leaks, or serious injuries) to never occur. Therefore, we aim to achieve “zero major accidents” as one of our management goals and have subsequently set common safety goals for all our employees.
Incident prevention efforts
As a way of quantitatively measuring our safety performance, we monitor two key performance indicators (KPIs) of injury-causing accidents: the lost time injury rate (LTIR)1 and the total recordable injury rate (TRIR)2. We gather such data in accordance with reporting guidelines defined by the IOGP and while benchmarking ourselves against IOGP participating companies. Our LTIR and TRIR for FY2023 were 0.51 and 2.17 respectively, representing a year-on-year increase for LTIR and decrease for TRIR.
During FY2023, a Tier 1 process safety event occurred at the Ichthys LNG Project3, but we identified the cause of the leak and have already implemented recurrence prevention measures.
As efforts for incident prevention, we continue to thoroughly share learning from incidents, and analyze and share insights on trends in major accidents and injurious incidents.
We also monitor two leading safety KPIs related to incident management—(1) implementation of incident investigations; and (2) implementation of high-priority corrective actions—to strengthen our ability to conduct prompt incident investigations and take remedial actions.
Incident investigations are conducted promptly upon occurrence, and the results of the investigation are required to be submitted within 7 to 40 days of the incident, depending on the severity. Bulletins and lessons drawn from incidents are shared with all employees via the HSE Portal and other methods. All incidents reported during 2023 were investigated and corrective actions were taken.
Further activities to prevent major accidents include firmly embedding Life-saving Rules to ensure the safe performance of tasks that carry a high risk of fatality.
1 Lost time injury rate (LTIR): Rate of injuries resulting in fatalities or lost time per million hours worked
2 Total recordable injury rate (TRIR): Rate of injuries resulting in fatalities or lost time, not entailing lost work time, or requiring medical treatment per million hours worked
3 Tier 1 process safety event at the Ichthys LNG Project: A heating medium oil leaked from the heating medium cooling system used in processing at the onshore LNG production facility. Production was stopped immediately and the leak was contained, so there was no impact on safety or the surrounding environment.