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Personal and process safety
People who work for Shell drive more than 1.1 billion kilometres a year to deliver fuel and other products, and help maintain our operations. Some build new plants in extreme conditions, work on remote offshore platforms, or run refineries and chemical plants. Keeping people safe is our top priority. We aim to have zero fatalities and no incidents that harm our employees, contractors or neighbours, or put our facilities at risk.
Toolbox meeting at the Qarn Alam EOR project
To prevent accidents, we manage safety in a systematic way and are introducing simpler and clearer requirements that are easier for people to understand and follow.
All Shell companies and joint ventures we control are required to manage safety in line with our Commitment and Policy on HSSE & SP, or materially equivalent policy. It sets our high level aims and is supported by a comprehensive set of company-wide requirements covering Health, Safety, Security and Environment (HSSE) and Social Performance (SP). We launched our HSSE & SP Control Framework in 2009 to clarify our requirements in these areas. It includes a set of manuals covering topics such as road and process safety, and working at heights or in confined spaces.
Personal safety
Personal safety means that our people follow the rules and work safely. We continue to improve the safety of the people who work for us. We also continue to enforce our mandatory 12 Life-Saving Rules with all employees and contractors who work for us.
Process safety
Process safety involves making sure our facilities are well designed, safely operated and properly maintained. Our stringent approach is designed to help prevent harm to people or the environment.
We identify and assess risks that have the potential to become an incident, and take the necessary steps to reduce or eliminate them. At the same time, we prepare for and are ready to respond to potential incidents.
Since 2006, we have been implementing a $6 billion programme to improve the safety of our oil and gas production facilities, including regular training for those who manage and operate them. In 2012 alone we invested around $1 billion in the safety and reliability of our refineries, chemical plants and distribution facilities.
