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SAT Protects the Marine Environment
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Offshore Arabia recently interviewed Saudi Arabian Texaco Vice President Mina Saud Operations Saleh Al-Ghamdi, whose responsibilities include oversight of the company’s oil export operations at Mina Al-Zour in the onshore Partitioned Neutral Zone between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. A veteran of 31 years with Saudi Arabian Texaco, Al-Ghamdi’s background is in petroleum engineering, field production and operations management.
What is Saudi Arabian Texaco’s operating philosophy for protecting the environment?
Saudi Arabian Texaco is committed to protect the environment, as a responsible corporate citizen in its own right, as a ChevronTexaco company, and as a longstanding member of the Regional Clean Sea Organisation (RECSO) and its predecessor organisations. Our responsibility is grounded in The ChevronTexaco Way. This is a corporation-wide, pragmatic framework for operating, and it provides the strategic purpose, processes and tools required for the corporation and business units like Saudi Arabian Texaco to achieve our shared vision of being the energy company most admired for our people, partnership and performance.
Can you give us a sense of how The ChevronTexaco Way works to protect the environment?
The cornerstone of The ChevronTexaco Way is Operational Excellence, or OE. OE is the systematic and coordinated management of safety, health, environmental protection, and operating reliability and efficiency to achieve world class performance. By operating with excellence, we protect people and the environment better; run our facilities more efficiently and reliably; and reduce costs associated with disruptions or incidents. This includes eliminating spills and environmental incidents, proactively identifying and mitigating major environmental risks, operating in a safe and healthy workplace with industry-leading asset reliability, and maximising efficient utilisation of resources and assets.
There’s another important part of the ChevronTexaco Way, and that is our values. Protecting the safety and health of people and the environment, and being recognised and admired worldwide for doing so, is one of our most important values. It is not merely an add-on; rather, it is at the core of our capabilities to execute our operating strategies and achieve our reputational and financial goals. We know from the experience of working in 180 countries, that for us to succeed over the long term, we must operate responsibly, particularly when it comes to protecting the environment.
How does Saudi Arabian Texaco go about implementing Operational Excellence?
We implement it through a comprehensive OE Management System, which requires us to set world class expectations, build plans to reach those goals, and then systematically manage improvement in practices and behavior to get world class results. One of the key drivers we have in these tasks is formal OE processes.
For example, we are now developing a new OE process for emergency management, including prevention, mitigation and response to marine and other operating emergencies. While previous programmes and strategies have generally served us well, we know that rising expectations on the parts of all stakeholders - employees, their families, communities, local and national governments – demand that we perform to ever higher standards of environmental protection and safety.
For our processes, we have very stringent auditing by experts from around the Corporation who conduct in-depth reviews of how well they are designed and being implemented. We then have a highly systematic approach for ensuring that the gaps identified are corrected, so we that our processes will work effectively and get the job done.
What are some examples of actions that Saudi Arabian Texaco is taking to protect the marine environment?
SAT exports oil from our facility at Mina Saud, where we load more than 100 ships each year, some with cargoes reaching more than one million barrels. Our location is a short distance from one of Kuwait’s major desalination and power plants, which many Kuwaitis and businesses depend on for water and electricity, and from a nearby recreational resort. It’s imperative that we take the utmost care at our operations to prevent spills, and we have compiled a record of zero oil spills for five years running. In addition, all of our facilities have wastewater treatment and monitoring strategies that help ensure zero discharge to the Gulf.
We have other safeguards. For example, we are one of the very few companies in the world with a special surge protection system built into our single point mooring system (SPM). It basically provides us with three lines of defense. If the pressure in the lines from the buoy to the ship exceeds a certain level, then a high pressure warning signal is sent from the buoy through telemetry to alert our Oil Control people. They, in turn, communicate this to the Mooring Master on duty on the tanker. If the pressure continues to go higher, a high pressure signal is generated from the SPM and transmitted to shut off the shore pumps automatically. Finally, if the pressure goes even higher, it will be released automatically through two relief valves installed in the buoy compartments into special surge tanks fitted in the SPM buoy body.
Late last year, our Marine Division employed an innovative procedure for flushing out and replacing hose lengths for the floating hose strings for our SPM buoy. What we did was to employ a closed circuit cycling of the flushed water. Clean water sourced from an oil tanker was flushed down one of the two floating hose strings through the SPM, then back up the second hose string to the tanker’s slop tanks. Once the operation was completed, the crew was able to change over hose lengths to new ones in each of the floating strings, then rotate the entire strings. The flushed water was stored in the tanker before being treated at an approved disposal facility at a subsequent port of call.
We carefully timed the operation to when ship traffic was at a minimum and during the summer, when seas are generally calm, to minimise risks and work interruptions. The procedure also helped us deal with limited capacity for handling the water used to flush out the floating hoses, and the need to ensure sufficient capacity for handling recovered water in the event of an oil spill. The task was accomplished with zero injuries, zero hydrocarbon emissions or oil spills, and no interruptions to normal operations -- and with an estimated savings of US$500,000 compared to what outside contractors would have charged.
As our resident OE expert said at the time, Marine’s achievement demonstrated the proven value of ChevronTexaco’s OE Management System. First, it showed strong leadership and accountability from management in setting out the vision and world-class objectives for the operation. Then personnel followed through in implementing the key steps to fully meet all requirements for safe operations, environmental protection, and reliability.
What has SAT done in the area of marine security?
Ten of our Marine Division and Safety, Health, Environment & Security Department personnel at Mina Saud terminal last year passed the Port Facility and Security Officer’s course after completing training in the provisions of the International Ship and Port Facility (ISPS) Security Code. We were among the first companies in the Gulf to complete this training, which focused on all aspects of marine-related security. SAT’s Mina Saud terminal was certified as an ISPS-compliant facility by the Kuwait Government ahead of the IMO deadline for full implementation at ports around the world.
Anything else that you would like to add about protecting the marine environment at Saudi Arabian Texaco?
As you know, we have a comprehensive oil spill response plan, we constantly conduct drills to test and improve our preparedness, and we are active in RECSO, ROPME and other organisations dedicated to protecting the marine environment. We maintain all the required equipment for coping with a local spill, and even have oil booms predeployed at the Al-Zour desalination and power plant, to gain time in the unlikely event of a spill.
Many of our Camp residents live right on the shores of the Arabian Gulf, and enjoy all that the Gulf has to offer. They are very protective of the area, and organise voluntary beach cleanups in addition to looking after the wildlife.
Some of our people work closely with experts at Kuwait University’s Marine Science Centre at Fintas to carefully track the nesting habits of turtles that come every year to lay their eggs on our beaches. Our volunteers relocate nests away from the threat of high-tide waters, and as necessary, help the hatchlings crawl out from their nests and make their way to the safety of the water. So, I think you can say that protecting the marine environment and wildlife is a top priority for us at Saudi Arabian Texaco, on and off the job. |
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