Chevron, Ecopetrol, Equión and Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) were recognized by the Regional Association of Oil, Gas and Biofuels Sector Companies in Latin America and the Caribbean (ARPEL) for their good performance in industrial safety, thus demonstrating their commitment to achieving high standards in both safety of people and integrity of facilities.

For this award, launched within the framework of the 50th anniversary of the Association, the data for 2014 provided for the safety benchmarking study that ARPEL has been conducting since 1997 were taken into account. The awards were presented to those member companies that had zero fatalities during the past year, that reported industrial safety data in 2012, 2013 and 2014, and had the lowest rate of incidents with working days lost for the corresponding category.

In Refining, Ecopetrol was the member company with the best performance in industrial safety in the category of more than 8 million man-hours worked, while PCJ had the best performance in the category of up to 8 million man-hours.

In the Upstream, awards were granted to Equión in the category of more than 10 million man-hours, and to Chevron in the category of up to 10 million man-hours.

The HSE Director of Ecopetrol and Chairman of ARPEL Health, Safety and Environment Committee, Andrés Pavia, highlighted three aspects that are key to having a good performance in industrial safety: consistency, self-care and operational discipline.

"The first key issue is the commitment of senior management, since if this item is not an important aspect for the organization it will be difficult to align it to the rest of the company. The second aspect is changing the culture and the vision of workers and contractors who work every day in our facilities considering the importance of safety to achieve the integrity of people and facilities, and the third one is doing things always in the same way according to the corporate procedures and guidelines in every corner of the company,"  Pavia said.

"We must follow in the path of continuous improvement in HSE with creativity, understanding that the fact of not having the resources of the past cannot be an obstacle to continue improving or an excuse not to achieve improvement. It is important to consider that working in HSE in a situation like the present one is a contribution to the need of companies to reduce their costs," the HSE Director of Ecopetrol stated.

For her part, the Director General for Latin America of Chevron, Kelly Hartshorn, pointed out "a strong culture of safety leadership with visible support all the way from the top in Chevron is key to driving world class performance in both personal and process safety."

"With engaged and committed leadership, effective processes and a strong OE culture, Chevron continues to reinforce the importance of a safety culture where everyone believes that all incidents are preventable and that “zero incidents” is achievable," Hartshorn concluded.

For his part, the Manager of Health, Process and Industrial Safety of Equión, César Aragón, said that the company "has received this recognition with great humility and it has been a source of great pride".

Aragón stressed that "the behavior of leaders, the awareness of individuals and a reliable health, safety and environment management system create, with time, humility and rigor, the safety culture that is the key to high performance in safety."

"In safety issues, the short term is now, and this is why we are working hard on the individual, reinforcing risk awareness in such a way that each individual is able to openly express his/her errors and opportunities in terms of security and he/she may generate and disseminate his/her commitments to safety, either by changing a behavior or creating a safe or healthy habit; in this way we are involved in the immediate causes of accidents," he said.

Along this same line, the General Director of PCJ, Winston Waston, stated that the key to achieving good performance in industrial safety is "establishing and maintaining a continuous training program, which is supported by Senior Management; and, seeking third party validation of our safety systems and processes."