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A young patient at the Starlight Foundation

Caltex helping Starlight bring smiles to seriously ill children.

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Around Caltex: Also in this issue

Caltex gets behind Starlight Day

Caltex people around the country are busy preparing for Starlight Day 2008 on Friday 2 May. This is the biggest fundraising event on the calendar for the Starlight Childrens Foundation which runs programs to help brighten the lives of seriously ill children and their families.

Last year Caltex employees and reseller and retail sites raised over $260,000 on Starlight Day in addition to other highly successful fundraising activities throughout the year. Caltex also makes an annual corporate donation to the Starlight Children's Foundation.

Starlight merchandise is already on sale throughout the Caltex retail network. And with strong participation Caltex franchisees are showing how it's done for Starlight Day with many stores selling out their Starlight merchandise within days and ordering more.

Meanwhile hundreds of Caltex employees across the country have put their hands up to help out on Starlight Day. The distinctive yellow and purple T-shirts of the Caltex sellers will be seen on the streets of Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide on 2 May. Other sites are hosting their own Star barbecues, raffles, car washes and other events to support the day.

Help Starlight bring smiles to seriously ill children. To get involved email starlight@caltex.com.au or call Justine Burke on 02 9250 5762.

Refineries re-rated to higher capacity

The Kurnell and Lytton refineries have lifted their official published nameplate refining capacities to reflect the sustained higher throughput of their crude distillation units in 2006/2007.

Kurnell refinery is now officially rated at 135,000 barrels per day (bpd), up from 124,000 bpd and Lytton has increased its official capacity to 109,000 bpd from 105,500 bpd. These new figures were published in the statistical information section in the Caltex 2007 Annual Report in March.

The capacity of the refinery is the maximum amount of crude oil that can be processed per operating day, based on at least a month of operating under normal conditions. The refineries' capacity was last officially upgraded in 1999, when Kurnell's was increased from 116,700 bpd to 124,000 bpd and Lytton's went from 104,000 bpd to 105,500 bpd.

The improvement has been steady, but operationally the refineries had their best performance on record from the completion of the Clean Fuels Project in mid-2006 to October 2007 when production was limited by unplanned shutdowns. The average utilisation rate in 2007 was a record 84% (2006: 78%) and new throughput records were set for the catalytic cracking units at both refineries and the crude distillation units at Kurnell.

It's an even better achievement when the utilisation increase is put in the context of refineries nameplate capacity increasing to 244,000 barrels a day from 230,000 barrels a day.

Printed annual report being replaced with online

The number of printed Caltex annual reports this year fell dramatically to 7,000 compared with 15,000 the previous year as the company moved the focus to the online version. The Caltex 2007 Annual Report was mailed out and went live on the Caltex public web site on 19 March.

Changes to the Corporations Act taking full effect this year meant that companies need only supply a hard copy report to those shareholders who "opt-in". Those who did not choose to receive a hard copy in the mail this year received a notice of meeting and proxy form as well as a letter from Chairman Elizabeth Bryan inviting them to read the report on the Caltex web site.

Staying safe: Doing what you say you will do

LPS

Failure to inform stakeholders when you can’t deliver what you promised can have negative consequences. The principles of the Loss Prevention System’s safe performance self-assessment (SPSA) checklist of "what can go wrong?" can be applied to good effect for reputation and relationships.

This was the case when weeks of premium fuel shortages in NSW and ACT in early 2008 and the absence of public information led to consumer anger, media outcry, political intervention and accusations of oil company conspiracies.

Production of premium fuels was affected by technical problems at Caltex and Shell refineries in Sydney at the beginning of the year. The problem was compounded by constraints on import availability and infrastructure and the shortages persisted through March.

Of the three major oil companies, Caltex and its customers were least affected due to early planning around a major maintenance shutdown in March at Kurnell. Arrangements had been made for imports to cover supplies of Caltex premium petrols Vortex 95 and Vortex 98.

While the oil companies were working hard behind the scenes to overcome the premium fuel supply problems there was no concerted effort to inform the public of what was happening.

Frustration grew, with angry consumers accusing oil companies of deliberately withholding supply to increase prices.

This perception grew with accusations in the media and NSW Government claims that service station operators were deliberately closing down pumps on Tuesday when the petrol price cycle was at its lowest. Department of Fair Trading inspectors carried out verification checks on petrol stations including opening up tanks to see if the tanks were empty or at minimum levels. They were.

It was not until Easter on 23 March that two major competitor oil companies ran full page newspaper advertisements explaining the reasons for the shortage, apologising to customers and promising that deliveries would resume as soon as possible, saying they would keep the public informed.

The community expects there will always be a reliable supply of fuel available. People do accept that things can occasionally go wrong. When kept well informed they will understand and discussion in the media and elsewhere is more likely to be about the facts rather than speculation.