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Spill prevention
Spill prevention is of utmost importance to protect human health and the environment. ExxonMobil’s operations integrity requirements seek to prevent spills by strengthening procedures, building in layers of protection, inspecting and maintaining equipment, training operators, and conducting
tests and drills.
Marine vessel spill performance
For more than four years, vessels owned and operated by our marine affiliates have safely transported all cargoes without any spills to water greater than 1 barrel. In addition, it has been more than three years since the last spill from a barge, and there were no spills from long-term chartered ships in 2010.
View chart: Marine Vessel Spills
We attribute this performance in part to the rigorous and systematic screening process used by our marine affiliates to examine hundreds of technical, operational, and other noncommercial factors. The people and processes involved in our marine activities are dedicated to continuous efforts to improve safety and environmental performance. Unfortunately, one single-voyage chartered vessel experienced a spill in 2010 in Texas. ExxonMobil actively monitored the ship owner’s spill response and subsequent investigations.
Other spill performance
In 2010, the total volume of hydrocarbons spilled to land or water was about 8 thousand barrels, 60 percent of which was recovered at the site of the spill. The number of nonmarine hydrocarbon spills greater than 1 barrel in 2010 was 25 percent lower than in 2006 and 11 percent lower than 2009. In 2009, we did not meet our expectation of continued improvement of our spill performance. In 2010, we increased emphasis on spill prevention and re-established our improvement trend.
After thorough analysis, we focused our effort on human behaviors that contribute to spills globally. Implementation of the Global Human Factors Best Practice Guide is intended to instill a zero-spill mindset throughout the organization. The Guide outlines 17 high-risk elements and corresponding procedures to reduce the likelihood of a human factor oil spill. In addition, we focused on achieving improvements at the refining sites with the highest spill rates over the last several years. A comprehensive improvement strategy was developed, which included root-cause analysis, targeted equipment upgrades, enhanced risk mitigation through selective inspections, and improved recordkeeping. In the Upstream, we implemented oil spill prevention initiatives by establishing teams to address issues common to multiple areas and to standardize prevention practices by enhancing personnel training and by improving surveillance techniques for early identification of spill risks.
