The Baker Panel Report - ABSA

Process safety as a core value in BP’s U.S. refineriesThe Panel’s review indicates that BP has not adequately established process safety as a core value across its U.S. refineries.Many competing values. The Panel’s refinery level interviews, the process safety culture survey, and some BP documents suggest thatsignificant portions of the U.S. refinery workforce do not believe that process safety is a core value at BP. As many of the refinery intervieweespointed out, and as some BP documents and the process safety culture survey seem to confirm, one of the reasons for this belief is that BP’sexecutive and corporate refining management have not communicated a consistent and meaningful message about the importance of processsafety and a firm conviction that process accidents are not acceptable. The inability of many in the workforce to perceive a consistent andmeaningful corporate message about process safety is easy to understand given the number of “values” that BP articulates: BP’s 18 “Group values,” only one of which encompasses health and safety—the company’s broad, aspirational goal of “noaccidents, no harm to people, and no harm to the environment.” Four “Brand values,” which BP claims “underpin everything we do”: being performance driven, innovative, progressive, and green.None of these relates to safety. BP’s code of conduct, which covers health, safety, security, the environment, diversity, ethics, and compliance.These messages to the BP workforce on so many values and priorities contribute to a dilution of the effectiveness of any management messageon process safety. This is consistent with a recent observation from the organizational expert that BP retained under the 2005 OSHA settlementrelating to Texas City:There appears to be no one, over-arching, clearly-stated worksite policy at Texas City, regardless of respondents’answers. The BP stated policy on health and safety, “no accidents, no harm to people and no damage to theenvironment” is not widely known at Texas City and points to a weak connection between BP Texas City and BP as acorporation. Safety communication is viewed more as a function of particular individuals in Texas City versus a BP widecommitment.Until BP’s management, from the Group Chief Executive down through the refinery superintendents, consistently articulates a clear message onprocess safety, it will be difficult to persuade the refining workforce that BP is truly committed on a long-term basis to process safetyexcellence.Of course, it is not just what management says that matters, and management’s process safety message will ring hollow unless management’sactions support it. The U.S. refinery workers recognize that “talk is cheap,” and even the most sincerely delivered message on process safety willbackfire if it is not supported by action. As an outside consulting firm noted in its June 2004 report about Toledo, telling the workforce that“safety is number one” when it really was not only served to increase cynicism within that refinery.Refinery interviews. The Panel’s interviews of hourly workers and refinery management establish that a significant portion of theU.S. refining workforce believed that production goals, operational pressures, or budgetary constraints sometimes overrode process safetyconcerns. This perception was most widely held at Toledo, Texas City, and Whiting, although interviews suggest that Texas City and Whiting aremaking progress on convincing the workforce that process safety comes first. At Carson, interviewees suggested that the perception thatproduction goals, operational pressures, or budgetary constraints overrode process safety concerns appeared to vary by unit in the refinery. ThePanel’s review indicates that the perception did not appear to be widespread at Cherry Point.At Toledo, higher levels of management typically stated that decisions regarding production and cost savings did not override process safetyconcerns, but that belief tended to change in the middle and lower ranks of the Toledo organization. Many lower and middle managersCorporate Safety Culture C 61