Qatargas’ Laffan Refinery (LR) asset has achieved two significant safety milestones by completing two consecutive years of operations without any Total Recordable Injury (TRI) and more than six years of operations without any Lost Time Incident (LTI) since its start-up in September 2009.
The Laffan Refinery is operated by Qatargas on behalf of Qatar Petroleum, Cosmo, Exxon Mobil, Idemitsu, Total, Marubeni and Mitsui shareholders. It is the largest condensate refinery in the world with a capacity of 160,600 barrels per day (bpd). This capacity will increase to 306,600 bpd with the Laffan Refinery 2 (LR2 expansion project) expected to be completed in the third quarter of this year. The high value products of the refinery include Naphtha, Kerojet, Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel, Propane and Butane.
This safety milestone achievement is the result of the continuous commitment to safety by the Qatargas leadership and workforce alike and adopting an integrated approach to safety that involves working in a cooperative manner to ensure the health and safety of all employees and contractors.
This TRI achievement was possible thanks to a management commitment to strengthen the Incident and Injury Free (IIF) culture in the company and a collective cooperation between all divisions involved in operation, maintenance, support functions and contractors with a common clear target of continuous focus on personal and process safety. Several elements of the integrated approach to safety in Laffan Refinery were successfully implemented with specific and recurrent safety tasks to operations, regular multi-discipline meetings and plant visits focusing on SHE (safety, health and environment) matters, the continuous reinforcement of IIF Culture through dedicated talks with all working personnel in the plant sharing best practices and lessons learnt, a regular recognition of safety findings and safe behaviors, an active reporting of all near misses and incidents, the strict follow-up of the implementation of all relevant corrective actions. In Laffan Refinery, the shared values include “I will not get hurt”, “we all go back home safe and sound”, and “if it is not safe, I will not do it.”
Since it started production, the Laffan Refinery has produced as on end-2015 a total of 153 million barrels of Naphta, 106 million barrels of Kerojet, 43 million barrels of Gasoil and 13 million barrels of LPG. A total of 880 ships have so far been loaded (398 Naphta, 382 Kerojet and 100 Gasoil) i.e. with a total shipped quantity of 34.1 million tonnes.
Late last year, Qatargas had initiated a Water Recycling Facility at Laffan Refinery 2. This facility is designed to handle the Treated Industrial Water from Laffan Refinery 1, currently in operation, and Laffan Refinery 2, which is under construction. The Water Recycling Facility aims at reducing the water consumption of these two plants and at eliminating the discharge of Treated Industrial Water. The recycled water is planned to be re-used in the Laffan Refineries 1 and 2 as boiler feed water and cooling water.