The 2021 APPEA Environment and Safety Excellence Award winners have been revealed, celebrating Australian oil and gas companies’ strong commitment to the environment and safety practices.
There were four categories in the awards this year. They were: Company Environment Excellence; Company Safety Excellence; Project Environment Excellence; and Project Safety Excellence.
APPEA Chief Executive, Andrew McConville, congratulated the winners – and all entrants – for their dedication to the highest environment, health and safety (EHS) standards.
“Australia’s oil and gas industry is committed to continuous improvement and the Awards provide an opportunity to recognise outstanding achievements in safety and environmental performance for individual projects and companies across our broad membership base,” Mr McConville said.
“It’s exciting to see innovative, industry-leading companies adopting new management approaches and technologies for challenges the industry faces, including for example emissions reduction. APPEA members are also leading the way in developing better ways to manage risk, helping to raise the bar for all of us.”
“I congratulate the winners and thank all those who submitted entries for their absolute commitment to upholding the highest environment and safety standards.”
The winners were announced at the APPEA 2021 conference gala awards dinner in Perth on Wednesday, 16 June 2021. The full list of winners can be found below:
Environment Project Excellence Award – Santos - North West Shoals to Shore Research Program
Australia’s North West is a marine frontier, a region rich in natural resources with exceptional habitats - teeming with life.
2020 marked the completion of the Australian Institute of Marine Science’s three-year North-West Shoals to Shore Research Program, sponsored by Santos.
The published research findings from the three-year program will greatly assist stakeholders and resource managers to understand the impacts of petroleum exploration and development on the marine environment.
The research program consisted of four areas of research.
- Marine noise monitoring and impacts on fisheries and aquaculture
- Seabed habitats and biodiversity
- Threatened species of the North West; and
- Understanding the isolated coral reef atolls of the North West Shelf.
Safety Project Excellence Award – Chevron Australia – Near point of care COVID-19 testing
Chevron Australia’s response to the personnel and operational challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic was exemplary.
Leading by example, Chevron leveraged the latest technology and partnered with suppliers to identify and deploy a novel solution enabling rapid, near point of care, diagnostic polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for COVID-19.
Chevron built relationships based on integrity and trust with internal and external stakeholders to achieve accreditation and government approval to operate the equipment on remote sites, including the Wheatstone Platform and the Onslow Hospital.
Environment Company Excellence Award – Santos
Despite the challenges experienced in 2020, with COVID-19 and low oil prices, Santos had an outstanding year for environmental performance, while also undertaking several improvement initiatives.
During 2020, Santos progressed their carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at Moomba in the Cooper Basin – which will be the second-largest CCS project in the world.
Santos has also partnered with Traditional Owners, and the Nature Foundation, to establish the first large-scale significant environmental benefit offset project in the South Australian Channel Country region –known as the Gidgealpa Offset Property (GOP).
In 2020 Santos also continued to support independent and peer-reviewed research, including:
- The North West Shoals to Shore Research Program
- A GISERA study into environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing in Queensland ; and
- CSIRO background and baseline methane surveys.
Safety Company Excellence Award – Arrow Energy – Achieving ‘Target Zero’
Arrow Energy’s 2020 safety performance was a Queensland coal seam gas industry and company record.
Arrow’s achievement against their goal of ‘Target Zero’ – was underpinned by a year without incident. This means:
- a Total Recordable Case Frequency Rate of zero –compared to the industry average of 3.3 ; and
- No tier 1 and tier 2 process safety incidents.
