No. 2, 2010
Interview of Dzhevan Cheloyants
,
Vice-President of LUKOIL, Head of the Main Technical Division
RESERVE FOR RESPONSIBILITY TOWARD THE FUTURE
In March 2009, the Management Board of LUKOIL approved a new version of the "Company Policy in the Sphere of Industrial Safety, Labor and Environmental Protection in the 21st Century". The key tasks in this field are to provide safe working conditions for employees, protect the health of personnel and the population in the areas where LUKOIL Group organizations operate and protect a favorable environment.
Q: What are LUKOIL's priorities in ensuring labor protection, industrial and environmental safety?
A: The Company has a successfully functioning system for managing industrial safety, protection of labor and the environment, including meeting the requirements of fire safety and measures to preclude and eliminate emergencies. It is structured in accordance with the effective Russian legislation, on the basis of the best domestic and foreign practices and is ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 certified. LUKOIL was the first Russian company to develop and introduce such a system and, in 2000, this work was awarded the Prize of the Government of the Russian Federation for science and technology. The effect of the system's introduction is clearly demonstrated by the industrial safety and labor protection indicators in LUKOIL Group organizations for the period from 1999 to 2008, which saw a 72% drop in the main injury indicators, a trend that is continuing today.
The achievements are largely a result of implementation of the LUKOIL Policy in the Sphere of Industrial Safety,
Labor and Environmental Protection in the 21st Century. This document is binding on all personnel not only of the Company itself, but also of contractor organizations. It was first adopted in 2002 and it is constantly being updated. Application of the "zero discharge" principle, production of environmentally friendly types of fuel that meet the relevant European standards, implementation of the Kyoto Protocol provisions on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and development of measures to increase energy efficiency - development of all these environmental spheres in the company's activities, which are, incidentally, carried out mostly voluntarily, have, over time, called for introduction of amendments into the Company Policy. In addition, the need to update the Policy is dictated by the changes in the Russian legislation and that of the other countries in which LUKOIL operates, as well as the requirements set out in the new versions of the ISO 14001:2004 and OHSAS 18001:2007 standards. For this reason, in March 2009, the Management Board of LUKOIL approved a new version of the Company Policy in the Sphere of Industrial Safety, Labor and Environmental Protection in the 21st Century.
We use target programs in our efforts to achieve the goals secured therein. Currently being implemented is the program for industrial safety, improvement of working conditions, prevention and elimination of emergencies in LUKOIL and other Company's subsidiaries for 2006-2010. Its main targets and objectives are: fostering of a safety culture among the Company's workforce; teaching, training and advance training; alignment of work stations with the regulatory requirements; provision of employees with effective means of personal protection and due sanitary, treatment and prevention conditions; prevention of and response to emergencies.
Q: How does LUKOIL train its personnel and encourage them to observe the relevant requirements?
A: Professional training of the Company's employees is one of the main lines of its development. The LUKOIL Group has a system for continuous personnel training to ensure that they acquire the requisite knowledge and professional skills.
The Company currently runs 26 training centers. We are constantly working to develop the material and production facilities of the training combines, ensure methodological provision for the training process and introduce the latest forms and technologies for training purposes.
LUKOIL uses the entire range of modern training technologies - business workshops, off-site workshops, special training programs, training abroad, training sessions, advance training courses, professional training days, remote learning and so on. The Company is developing co-operation with leading national higher educational institutions - the Russian Civil Service Academy under the President of the Russian Federation, the Gubkin Oil and Gas University, the Finance Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation, Oil and Gas Business Institute, and the State University - Higher School of Economics. In 2008, a co-operation agreement was concluded with the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.
As for encouraging personnel to observe the relevant safety rules, one of the measures designed for this is appraisal of LUKOIL Group employees' activities to ensure the requisite level of industrial safety, labor and environmental safety. The Company also holds regular competitions on labor protection which help to identify the best representatives of individual specialties, and competitions for the title of "Best Employee" and "Best LUKOIL Group Organization".
Q: How might the current trends in development of global oil and gas production associated with their spread to the offshore shelf and remote areas with particularly vulnerable ecosystems reflect on the Company's policy in the sphere of labor protection, industrial and environmental safety?
A: The need to ensure environmental safety applies to all stages of project implementation - from the investment concept to start-up of the new facility and, if necessary, elimination of production units and equipment. Planned work to ensure the environmental safety of the LUKOIL Group has allowed us, first of all, to reduce the impact of production facilities on the environment; second, to optimize energy and water consumption; third, to develop technologies minimizing production waste, emissions and discharges of pollutants, while increasing the use of associated gas for generating electric power in remote areas. In addition, the Company has undertaken environmental rehabilitation of territories in the Republic of Komi affected by the oil spills (which, it's worth noting, occurred mostly before LUKOIL arrived in the area), increased production of output with environmental characteristics meeting the latest international requirements.
LUKOIL is implementing major production projects on territories with vulnerable ecosystems: commercial development of the Kravtsovskoye field on the Baltic Sea shelf has been initiated and the Nakhodskoye gas field in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area, the trans-shipment hub in Vysotsk, Leningrad Region, and the Varandey terminal on the Barents Sea have been commissioned. In addition, the Company is surveying and preparing for development of oil and gas fields on the Caspian shelf. In all these cases, too, the impact of the facilities on the environment and the risk of accidents have been reduced to a minimum.
To avoid environmental pollution of the Baltic and the North Caspian seas, LUKOIL was the first oil and gas producing company to apply and successfully implement the "zero discharge" principle. In practice, "zero discharge" means that work is organized in such a way that all domestic wastes, industrial waste water and oil-field water, production and consumption waste resulting from geological surveying, prospecting and production of hydrocarbons are transported to the shore, where they are purified and disposed of. The fact that the standards for organizing observance of the "zero discharge" principle applied during development of the Kravtsovskoye (D-6) field in the Baltic Sea have provided the basis for the recommendations made for all countries operating on the Baltic shelf constitutes recognition of the positive results achieved by the Company in the sphere of environmental safety. These standards have thus virtually become the legislative norms for all those operating in the Baltic.
Q: Which of the latest developments, especially in the sphere of nanotechnology and alternative energy, might be applied in the Company's activities in the foreseeable future?
A: An important place in LUKOIL's development strategy belongs to application of innovative energy-saving and environmentally safe technologies, and the Company works actively in the sphere of renewable energy. Hydro- and wind-power, as well as solar and geothermal energy are considered as the current priorities in this segment. We have now initiated a number of pilot projects. In particular, a petrol-filling station has been built in Sochi equipped with a photo-electric power plant that provides up to a third of the electric power it requires. Construction and installation work has also been completed at two gasoline-filling stations in Siberia, also equipped with photo-electric power plants.
Use of alternative energy sources in a number of cases provides for the functioning of facilities in the absence of a centralized electricity supply or their stable functioning in the event of centralized electricity cuts and, in some cases, makes it possible to do without diesel electric power plants, thus helping to protect the environment against harmful discharges.
As for the prospects for implementing projects in the sphere of nanotechnology, it is clear that the nano-industry is one of the most promising spheres in the development of modern industry. LUKOIL is monitoring the latest achievements in this area. The currently known safety system nano-technologies include various nano-sensors and nano-composite coatings increasing effective protection of facilities.
In October 2009, the Company concluded a general agreement on strategic partnership with Rosnanotekh. Within its framework LUKOIL is to take part, in conjunction with the RUSNANO Group, in projects involving introduction of nano-technologies at the stage of pilot production. So we are at the start of a long journey.
