Our Responsibilities

Oil Search is the operator of oil and gas explorations, development and production licences in Papua New Guinea, the Middle East and North Africa. The Company conducts its activities in environmentally, culturally and socially sensitive areas. The Company is committed to achieving Incident Free operations through the provision of effective Health, Safety, Environmental and Security (HSES) Management Systems across all of its operations and worksites that benefit employees, contractors and the community. The Company is committed to:

• Promoting HSES objectives and responsibilities as an integral part of the duties of management and all employees;
• Complying with applicable laws and other obligations and requirements that the Company subscribes to, and where adequate laws do not exist, adopting and applying standards that reflect the Company’s commitment to HSES;
• Reporting and evaluating risks, threats, hazards and impacts to Company operations that have the potential to adversely affect the environment or the health and safety of employees, contractors or the community;
• Implementing appropriate control and contingency measures to minimise and manage these risks, threats, hazards and impacts to an acceptable level;
• Establishing and ensuring that HSES standards are followed and effective practices promoted to ensure that the environment, people, property and information are protected from harm;
• Selecting and engaging contractors whose HSES Management Systems are acceptable to the Company and whose commitment to this policy is clearly and continuously demonstrated;
• Providing competent human resources to manage relevant aspects of health, safety, environment or security;
• Communicating openly with all stakeholders on HSES related issues;
• Providing training, instruction and supervision to personnel to enable them to attain the knowledge and skill levels necessary to perform their work incident free;
• Maintaining appropriate contingency arrangements and;
• Continually monitoring, reviewing and improving HSES performance so that our activities can continue without interruption.

This policy applies to all employees and contractors engaged in conducting the Company’s business.

While Oil Search Managers and Supervisors are primarily responsible for ensuring compliance with this policy, every employee and contractor has a responsibility to promote a culture whereby their actions and those of their colleagues are consistent with these commitments.

During 2008, Oil Search and its contractors achieved improvements in safety performance across most parts of the business, with particular success achieved in key areas of the PNG operations. This was very pleasing, given that the Company’s safety performance is already world class and that it operates in developing countries with very challenging terrain.

This improvement represents a strong endorsement of the Company’s safety systems and practices. It was made against a backdrop of integrating two new Oil Search owned drilling rigs and a hydraulic work-over unit into the PNG operations, a transition of drilling contractors and upward pressure on availability of skilled resources in most operational areas. The Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (TRIFR) achieved for 2008 was 2.04. This compares very favourably to the 2007 APPEA peer group TRIFR of 6.78 and places Oil Search in the top quartile for TRIFR performance of the international oil companies that contributed data to OGP statistics for 2007.