Transparency and trust

Dominic Portelli, Terminal Operator at Newport, a "model for other terminals to follow"

Caltex’s Newport Terminal in Victoria has won an unconditional licence to operate, granted in part to the company’s transparency and honesty about its strengths and weaknesses and to Caltex rectifying deficiencies.

After officers from the regulator WorkSafe Victoria spent months at Newport Terminal in Melbourne examining safety control measures and systems, they recently awarded the site an “unconditional licence” to operate as a major hazard facility.

This announcement represents a truly impressive achievement.

Of the 45 major hazard facilities in Victoria, Newport is now one of the few – very few – to have no WorkSafe conditions attached to its licence to operate.

That, says Jo Derrick, National Major Hazard Facilities Compliance Manager for terminals, is a tribute to the determination and hard work of the Caltex people involved in ensuring Newport’s safety compliance is of the highest standard. Moreover, the protocols developed and fine-tuned at Newport have set a model for all other Caltex terminals to follow.

“We could never have achieved this without strong engagement from the whole operations team,” says Jo. “They spent one day every week for two years engaged in this work; we had 69 workshops to complete the detailed risk analysis involving over 2,600 man hours.”

Learning from history

What’s behind this story? For the answer we need to go all the way back to 1974. In that year, a bypass pipe installed at the Nypro factory at Flixborough in England failed when about 40 tonnes of hot cyclohexane, a chemical used in the production of nylon, discharged into the air. It caused a vapour cloud explosion that killed 28 people, devastated the plant.

From then on regulators around the world began to recognise that while companies were spending much time focusing on more frequent safety incidents, they weren’t placing enough emphasis on “major process safety events” that, while rare, can have enormous consequences.

In response new regulations were introduced for facilities which handle large quantities of hazardous materials like flammable liquids and gases.

In 2000, responding to an explosion at the Esso Longford gas plant, Victoria became the first state in Australia to adopt a major hazard facility regime. Newport terminal was given its first licence to operate in 2004, for five years. The recent licence renewal is for an additional five years.

The value of transparency

WorkSafe’s representatives told Caltex a key consideration in granting the licence was the company’s transparency and honesty about its strengths and weaknesses. Where there were deficiencies Caltex recognised and addressed them.

Acknowledging the same high standards should be applied to all facilities that handle large amounts of hazardous materials, Caltex’s Supply & Distribution division has formed a team to roll out the approach to all terminals, irrespective of the legislative requirement to do so.

This team is currently well advanced on safety cases for Banksmeadow, Lytton and Hobart terminals.