Health, Safety & Environment

The company worked so hard in the past few years to promote Health, Safety & Environment best practices and started setting records in the three fields. With regard to safety, KNPC since the year 2000 developed a new safety strategy, by introducing a new management system based on identifying risks and hazards, attacking them, pursuit of systematic auditing that ensures best practices in Health, Safety & Environment performance. KNPC strongly believes that Health, Safety & Environment are core values, that must not be compromised in the name of profits.

Safety and Health of those who work for the company are particularly important as they are the company main assets.

The company introduced as early as the year 2000, the Safety, Health and Environment Management System “SHEMS” that was designed to have in place an implementable system that identifies risks, remove them through a sustainable system of practices that keep up safety standards as advanced as possible and involves an auditing mechanism in which even the company higher management plays a leading role. Continual development is synonymous to safety in KNPC Refineries and other sites of work.

Development of SHEMS was a turning point in the company Health, Safety & Environment strategy. Through its 14 elements it incorporates role for everyone in HSE policy, safety work practices and standards, training and competency. Emergency preparedness, incident reporting and investigation, risk identification and management of change, safety based behavior, roles, responsibilities and assignments for everyone, in addition to commitment to occupational health and Environment protection. People at all levels in KNPC are responsible for implementing the company safety policy. They will demonstrate correct HSE behavior, clearly define rules and responsibilities provide the needed resources and will establish a monitoring system. Along with SHEMS the company Health, Safety &

Environment Department continues to promote safety awareness throughout the company with a view to promoting a safety culture inside the organisation, and thereby enhancing safety behavior in the community.

The company safety achievements were outstanding with a combined employees-contractor record. As an example the Project Department in the company achieved in the fiscal year 2006/2007 a record of 4.2 million man-hours without any accident leading to lost working case (LWC).

The three refineries achieved in the same period millions of man-hours. This is an indicator to the significant improvement in the company safety standards.

The company three refineries, the Project Department and the Local Marketing Department also were selected since 2002 to win the prestigious ROSPA award (Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents) a British organization that monitors the Health, Safety & Environment performance of other companies worldwide. Other prizes received include the National Safety Award of the British Safety Council for a number of consecutive years.

Following the mishaps at Shuaiba and Mina Al-Ahmadi Refineries in June 2000, an ad hoc committee was set up by the company to implement, audit and certify 58 recommendations intended to be a safety road map for every refinery. The Consolidated Recommendation Execution Committee (CREC) completed its work in the year 2006 as the recommendations were executed in detail, certified and audited. Safety business in the company received a new momentum with this consolidated.

HSE Department in collaboration with Corporate Communications Department, and other departments in the company conducts on regular basis awareness campaigns to consolidate a common culture by which safety practices and measures are exercised in a consistent behavioral routine. The great attention given to safety practices is justified by the fact that the refining industry undertaken by KNPC comes with some risks both for people and assets. The challenge is to identify and abort those risks (HSE Training).

Training programs are developed and delivered in line with SHEMS Element # 4 “Training & Competency” and on the basis of training need assessment listed in the Mandatory HSE Training matrix. The courses include Safety, Occupational Health, Environment topics and also functional safety courses related to respective discipline. HSE Training is important to KNPC personnel working for or on behalf of KNPC i.e. Contractor & Sub Contractor’s workmen with prime objective to learn, refresh and update HSE knowledge and skills and continually improve on their HSE performance at work. The training on various

topics for new recruits, experienced employees and also key persons of the service contractors is carried out through classroom training conducted by HSE Training Center, Safety & Fire Divisions of three refineries, and Environment Division on the job training on safety related topics. Safety talk and Safety Movies are also regularly conducted at operators shelters and control rooms.

It is mandatory for all KNPC and Secondment employees to attend HSE induction course prior to joining the department or before the commencement of an assigned job. The course includes Safety fundamentals, Occupational Health & Hygiene and Environment Management System (ISO 14001). New recruits (UDs) attend a comprehensive course organized by Career Development Department which includes coverage on HSE topics.

Kuwait National Petroleum Company is committed to the protection of the Environment. This commitment is being translated into hard work and determination to combat pollution at its very sources, especially air and sea pollution. Concrete measures were taken in this perspective to improve the standards of Environment protection including a number of costly projects designed mainly to serve this purpose. Kuwait National Petroleum Company has implemented Environment Management System conforming to ISO 14001:2004 standards. The key aspect of ISO 14001 system is to achieve continual improvement by addressing non conformances

and by setting new targets to achieve. Hence audit becomes one of the essential tools to achieve this. Accordingly, external surveillance audits were carried out by M/S LRQA in July 2006 and January 2007 to cover all the sites of KNPC. Auditor expressed satisfaction on the progress made towards implementation of Environment Management System (EMS) and the recommendations of audit is being implemented. In addition to this, internal (EMS) audit was also carried out for all the sites during the year.

The certification of ISO -14001 was another recognition of KNPC commitment to the local and world environment.

KNPC is committed to the protection of Environment. In recognition of KNPC’s effort to maintain clean environment within its neighborhood, it was awarded On December 2008 the prize of the first position by the Council of Arab Environment Ministers for Clean Product Projects. This prize is awarded to the best scientific researches and studies or the best clean production practices, which resulted in significant impacts that helped in conserving both natural resources and energy , besides cutting down pollution and helping sustainable development.

KNPC also won in 2007 the 2nd place of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Award for Environment Management organized under auspices of the Arab Organization for Administrative Development – affiliate to the Arab League.

To enhance the company commitment to Environment protection a number of projects are currently under implantation such as:

Tail Gas Treatment Unit (TGTU) project at SHU Refinery was commissioned on 9th October 2006 with the commissioning of this project there is 80% reduction in SO2 emission from incinerator of Shuaiba Refinery. SO2 emissions from incinerator stack of Shuaiba Refinery are now within limit set by Kuwait Environment Public Authority.

As an Environmental objective for 2006-07, an Odor Management System (OMS) has been developed. A comprehensive report on OMS has been prepared and released for implementation at all three KNPC refineries and Local Marketing facilities.

This report describes an Odor Management System (OMS) for KNPC to effectively control and eliminate odor. It elaborates on the Program design and execution, achievements, shortcomings and transition requirements. Accordingly, site committee has been formed at individual sites to co-ordinate implantation of OMS report.

The report also proposes a 5 year implementation plan for Odor Management System at KNPC. The three major components of the OMS are leak Detection and Repair, Complaint Recording and Tracking System and Odor stressors identification and control measures.

Quality of ambient air in any industrial unit has utmost significance, keeping this in mind, KNPC is maintaining 2 mobile ambient air quality monitoring stations which continuously monitor ambient air quality at three refineries. On need basis these mobile stations can be shifted outside also to monitor ambient air quality.

In addition to this, periodic stack monitoring of stacks are carried out to ensure that stack emission from these are within the Environment Public Athority limits. Various on line analyses and software based Environment Information Management System (EIMS) module helps in verification of stack monitoring results.

Industrial waste water is routed to effluent treatment until in all the three refineries before being discharged into sea. Daily regular monitoring of effluent water sample is done by KNPC as well as (Napesco) lab to ensure that various parameters of effluent water is within K-EPA limits.

In order to further improve the awareness about Solid Waste Management programme at KNPC sites and enforce compliance of solid waste handling, transportation and disposal, awareness courses are regullarly conducted at the three Refineries for the employees. separate courses on Solid Waste Manifest Authorization are conducted on regular basis for selected employees and employees. This was done to ensure that steps involved in solid waste i.e. storage, segregation and disposal to identified destination is carried out as per procedure. During April- March 2006-7 a total 279 employees passed this test and are now authorized to sign waste transportation manifest. In order to reduce solid waste generation, sludge treatment and handling unit at MAB refinery is being operated which processes oily sludge and recovers valuable oil from the sludge which is again sent for reprocessing. The left over solid residue from this plant is only 10% of total volume of sludge processed. Thereby solid waste generation is reduced by 90% from this plant. During the period April- March 2006-07 5350 m3 of oil was recovered by processing 12945 m3 of oily sludge in this plant.

This common project for all three Refineries will significantly reduce the pollutant in effluent discharge. It is set for completion in August 2009.

This unit was built at Mina Abdulla Refinery to treat oil sludge from the three refineries. Disposal of this polluting source, as residues of oil and products contaminate the soil and the air became a mission of paramount importance to the company .Within a relatively short time after its commissioning in 2005 ,the result was zero sludge in the three plants.