HELLENIC PETROLEUM Group views Health and Safety as its most significant priority. The Group systematically manages Health and Safety issues in all its activities, including development projects in Refinery and Petrochemical, and Marketing, as well as in E&P. For this reason, all required safety measures are undertaken for employees, contractors and visitors in all work areas, in alignment with the UN’s international Sustainability Goal for Good Health (SDG 3).

The Group continuously invests in prevention, infrastructure as well as personnel and contractor training in Health and Safety to ensure compliance with the strictest standards on a national and European level. Indicatively, in 2019, approximately 18 million euros were invested in safety improvements in all Group facilities across Greece and internationally.

All Group facilities set objectives to control and improve their performance on Health and Safety issues, with reporting and appraisal carried out periodically. Objectives on specific safety indicators are set and monitored based on CONCAWE’s proposals.

In 2019, the Group’s Holistic Safety program came to completion, on the basis of which, new safety procedures were issued, existing procedures were improved and critical best practices were developed for the three refineries and other Group facilities.

In 2019, the Group improved its overall position in key H&S indicators relative to European industry averages, by one quartile (CONCAWE Safety statistics) despite reporting increases in some indicators. The Process Safety Event Rate (PSER) indicator, which is a basic operations safety indicator, improved significantly vs. 2018, exceeding the goal that had been set.

Specifically, in 2019, out of 10,180,194 labor-hours, 22 Lost Workday incidents were reported with approximately 30% of the total attributed to the slips/trips/falls category.

The diagrams below show the trends in the basic safety key performance lagging indicators (KPIs).

In 2019, the targets set for carrying out safety visits (annual program) as well as for the reporting and investigation of near misses were achieved, which are basic leading indicators for H&S performance across all Group facilities.

In the context of consolidating a common Safety Culture at all Group facilities, basic H&S training continued (which included fire safety, first aid, rescue techniques, basic safety procedures, best practices, etc.). Training extends to external partners’ contractors, visitors, tank truck drivers and service station operators in accredited training centers.

It is important to highlight that in 2019, training time of own staff and contractors increased by 10% in relation to the previous year (approximately 60,000 training labor-hours).