Statoil's highest reward for efforts on health, safety and environment in 2009 goes to the Kårstø processing plant in the Natural Gas business area.

"Kårstø has shown a strong commitment and a systematic approach to the HSE challenges for many years," said chief executive Helge Lund when he presented the award at the corporate summit today, March 3rd.

Kårstø wins the award for their project on simultaneous development and operation. Through many years a large workforce has been involved in improving the robustness of the plant.

The effort has involved a number of critical activities at the processing plant, in parallel with regular operation. Still, the organization has achieved excellent HSE results.

"Through good planning Kårstø has improved their understanding of risk across the whole organisation, and thereby identified any risk before it occurred," said Lund. "They have worked systematically with partners and suppliers to involve them in their HSE effort."

During high project activities in connection with the plant upgrade the Kårstø gas hub has carried out safe operations with high regularity.

The processing plant at Kårstø has been in operation since 1985 and is a complex plant with six process trains and a large operating staff.

There were a total of 80 nominees to the HSE award, an increase from 60 nominees last year. Six of them were nominated as finalists and visited by the HSE award committee.

Head of HSE in Statoil Gunnar Brevik presented the six finalists to the participants at the corporate summit and emphasised that all the finalists should feel like winners.

"The finalists represent a wide range of our HSE work and underline the importance of local initiatives for improved HSE efforts," said Helge Lund.

Tags: Statoil