AKSAI, Western Kazakhstan, May 2, 2002--The BG Group has selected Karachaganak Integrated Organisation to receive a 2002 Chairman's Award for Health, Safety and the Environment. The Award Ceremony was held 27 April in London. KIO was the outright winner in the health and safety performance category in recognition of the company's safety record and operational performance. The Award, established in 1999, honours the BG Group projects and companies that achieve outstanding safety and environmental results that demonstrate notable efforts to train and motivate their employees and contractors to conduct operations in a safe and responsible manner.
Receiving the prestigious award from BG Chairman, Richard Giordano, on behalf of KIO, was Vyacheslav Yusupov, HSE Superintendent. Also representing Karachaganak at the ceremony were Andrei Rukhlin, Chief Project Engineer, John Morrow, KIO Venture Director, and Jack Hinton, HSE Director. "This Award signifies KIO's commitment to health, safety and environmental protection," said John Morrow.
"This Award is a credit to all KIO employees and contractor employees in their achievement of truly outstanding results in HSE performance. This award recognises their accomplishments and commitment to KIO's core values of safe and environmentally sound operations. It also shows that we are moving closer to our vision of an incident-free workplace. Our Contractors share this award with us as vital partners in helping achieve these results".
The BG Chairman's Awards for Health, Safety and the Environment have, since 1999, established themselves as one of the most effective, prestigious and worthwhile in the oil & gas industry. A total of 57 entries representing different projects of The BG Group from 19 countries were entered in the six categories for this year’s awards. The following elements of KIO's HSE performance were particularly emphasised in the Award Ceremony - the Joint HSE Ownership Charter implemented between KIO and the main works contractor; the significant reduction of the lost time incident frequency (LTIF) rate, which is now only 30% of oil and gas producers average; the lowest construction LTIF reported by an oil & gas company and 78% reduction in road traffic accidents since 1999.
Commenting on the event, Jack Hinton, KIO HSE Director said: "I would like to congratulate all KIO employees and contractors for this accomplishment. Without their hard work and support for safety, health and environmental initiatives, this success would not have been possible. At the same time, we will not settle for status quo, as it is our aim to make the Karachaganak venture one of the world's foremost examples for HSE best practice and to provide a model for Kazakhstan and the industry to follow."
This was the third year in succession that Karachaganak has won an award - each year progressing to the highest award level. In 1999, Karachaganak was honoured for Saipem Drilling’s outstanding performance by a contractor award. In 2000 the project was top in the safety performance improvement category. “This Award – Health and Safety Performance, and those we have won in previous years, demonstrates the sustained commitment that the whole Karachaganak team places on HSE,” added Jack Hinton.
