Occupational health

The core of the scientific outlook on development is to put people first. It starts with the respect for life and health. We believe that health concerns the morale of our employees and the competitiveness of the Company. Health of employees is the Company’s valuable assets. Physical and mental health is a prerequisite to the competency of our employees and also to our corporate competitiveness.

Sinopec has always been pursuing integrated HSE management and has included the concept of putting people first in management for better combination of occupational health, safety and environmental protection.

Sinopec has established the Occupational Health Division in the HSE Department, which is responsible for the management of the occupational health. In 2010, Sinopec scored good results in maintaining occupational health by keeping both the rate of occupational health check and workplace hazard monitoring at above 90%. No acute poisoning accidents involving three or more employees ever took place while annual incidence of occupational disease was kept under 0.02%.

Establish and improve the occupational health system with clear responsibility

Sinopec attaches great importance to the occupational health management and has continuously improved its occupational health management system and corresponding technical system.

Sinopec sets up specific agencies to strengthen oversight, streamline the management structure for better management networks responsible for the occupational health of employees. We managed to identify the occupational health status quo of Sinopec employees by conducting general surveys to facilitate next step activities.

We revised and improved several specific management rules and regulations according to the national laws, regulations and standards such as “Occupational Health Regulations”, “Highly Toxic Substance Control Regulations”, “High Temperature Work Regulations”, “Radiation Protection Regulations”, “Employee Hearing Protection Regulations”, “Labor Protection Costs and Individual Labor Protection Products Regulations”, “Occupational Health Management Performance Appraisal Regulations” and “Workplace Snail Fever Prevention Regulations”. As a result, Sinopec formed an occupational health management system with its own characteristics.

By organizing trainings for “Occupational Health Regulation”, Sinopec further standardized its occupational health check, occupational health hazard monitoring, diagnosis of occupational diseases and establishment of occupational health archives to be in line with the national laws, regulations and standards.

Comprehensively improve the occupational health management by stepping up oversight

Sinopec strictly follows the Occupational Disease Control Law of the PRC and endeavors to improve the awareness and ability of employees to protect themselves by enhancing education and dissemination of occupational health related laws, regulations and rules.

Sinopec underscores occupational health supervision and inspection. In 2010, we organized 17 inspection teams with occupational health experts to inspect HSE performance in 90 subsidiaries. We further enhanced occupational health management through inspection, summary and rectification. In 2010, we focused on the occupational health supervision on marketing subsidiaries to help them achieve comprehensive and coordinated development of occupational health.

Focus on eliminating occupational hazards from the root

Occupational hazards exist mainly in workplace. Safety in workplace means occupational health. Sinopec focuses its occupational health efforts on controlling sources of occupational hazards, monitoring workplace and addressing hazard potentials.

In 2010 Sinopec managed to control occupational hazards from their sources by delivering 100% in health control execution rate and hazard reporting rate in newly-built, expansion and revamping projects. Hazard monitoring work in workplace was further enhanced by monitoring 110 categories of occupational hazards, whose qualification rate met the requirements of both central and local authorities. We further inspected and addressed potential hazards for the improvement of work environment by replacing high toxic materials with non-toxic or low toxic ones, upgrading equipment seals, constructing more occupational health protection facilities, alert, emergency and sanitary facilities. We ensured the health of individual employees by equipping each of them with work protection materials and taking protection measures on operators.

Enrich the occupational health content gradually.

Sinopec always upholds an open and progressive mindset in strengthening occupational health management. We enhance oversight on the occupational health while organizing occupational health check for employees exposed to occupational hazards. Those diagnosed with occupational disease will be notified and treated while being transferred to other positions. In addition, the Company properly helps employees with occupational diseases in routine health check, treatment and recovery to ensure their rights.

We also actively engage in psychological health check. We organize interviews and questionnaire surveys among typical employees jointly with related research institutes. We make a preliminary program to gain knowledge on overseas employees’ psychological health and interview some of them. These measures help us enrich the content of occupational health and broaden the horizon for future occupational health development.

Carry out detailed management to ensure health of employees both physically and mentally.

Sinopec will strictly follow the related regulations such as the Occupational Disease Control Law of the PRC in 2011 while putting people first with more detailed management. Based on our solid occupational health performance, we will improve occupational health plans and specific measures while creating an employee health archive. We will enhance the oversight of important workplaces by monitoring occupational hazards strictly in line with standards and regulations, taking measures to prevent and control highly toxic substances such as hydrogen sulfide, benzene, chlorine and ammonia, addressing potential hazards and improving on-site work condition. Besides, we’ll carry out a pilot program on psychological health in key areas such as overseas projects for physical and mental health of our employees.

Safety

Safe production is the cornerstone of our business development. In 2010, we strictly followed the policy of “Safety First, Prevention Foremost and Comprehensive Control”. We launched “iSafe” campaign to further identify and eliminate potential safety hazards and strengthen safety management of our contractors. We made remarkable progress in creating a safe environment for production, operation and business development.

Complete mechanism, strengthen supervision and ensure effective implementation of safety responsibility system

Aiming at further implementing HSE management mechanism, we revised regulations on safety supervision management in direct operation and potential hazards identification and elimination on the basis of daily work. We strictly enforced the Work Safety Order, annually organizing general and specialized HSE inspections, examining major subsidiaries on their HSE performance. HSE videoconference was held quarterly to report accidents and make working plan. We unswervingly persist in full stress on HSE work, which improves implementation of HSE responsibility system in place at all levels.

“iSafe” activity remarkably raises safety awareness of our employees

From “Work Safety Order” be published in July 2007, “iSafe” activity in 2009, to further implementation of the Order in 2010, our employees shifted safety concept from passivity to initiative step by step.

The “iSafe” activity in 2010 mainly highlighted key safety requirements, made breakthroughs in difficult safety management areas, and with the implementation of the “Work Safety Order”, “HSE Observation Card”, “Attempted Incidents Regulations”, we achieved remarkable results of enhancing employees’ safety awareness, responsibility for work safety, and standardizing safety behavior.

Various events and activities were conducted to raise employees’ safety awareness, including “Safe Production Month” campaign and wintertime “100-day Accident Free” competition.

Pay much attention to peril treatment to continuously improve intrinsic safety

In 2010, we endeavored to identify and eliminate potential safety hazards by strictly implementing the HSE principles on project management and supervision principles that headquarters monitoring, each-level managing, and subsidiaries in charge. We have brought out 3 series of risk management projects and fund plan, input RMB1.83 billion on 664 projects, and improved safety level of workplaces, plants and equipments.

After the explosion accident of the drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, we underwent safety evaluation of offshore oil and gas facilities, which has found 6 aspects of problems in terms of platform corrosion, submarine pipeline suspension, low standard of coast road, pipeline network and cables, ship obsolescence, lack of emergency resources, weak foundation of overseas marine operational safety, and worked out a 3-year working plan to solve those problems.

Build a company-wide emergency rescue system and improve emergency response capabilities

Emergency management is one of our top priorities. We have established a complete and unified emergency management guidance system under the principle of “whole staff, whole process, all dimensions and all weather”. The emergency management system was set up in each subsidiary of all business segments.

To improve emergency management practices, we prepared and revised Sinopec Multi-casualty Emergency Response Plan which consists of an overall emergency response scheme and 17 sub-level schemes covering four categories of incidents, namely industrial safety incidents, public health incidents, natural disasters and public safety incidents. These schemes, together with the emergency response plans of Sinopec subsidiaries, constitute the whole Sinopec emergency response system. While preparing these plans and schemes, we ensured they are legitimate, reasonable, actionable, forward-looking, practical and cost effective.

In terms of allocating and managing emergency response resources, we follow the principle of “self-reliance and community involvement” to optimize resource allocation. Long distance between our oilfields or refineries and the local urban areas, and the special characteristics of petroleum and petrochemical industry resulted in relatively few emergency response resources for us. Thus, we work hard to ensure emergency response resources are available and easily accessible whenever needed. Currently, we have 12,000 full-time firefighters and over 1,100 firefighting vehicles and gas leakage prevention vehicles in service across the company.

Improve safety management along the production line with focus on contractors and temporary workers

We followed the contractor responsibility system to eliminate and control risks from the source. We ensured that our contractors fully meet our safety requirements by tightening safety control during project bidding process and implementing approval for contractor HSE qualification and certification. We regularly publicized any violations of rules and regulations in order to enforce constraint on contractors.

We strengthened safety control of contractors by bringing management of contractors into the project owner’s HSE management system so as to unify management, standard and requirement. Profound lessons were learned from contractor accident and we regarded them as our own accident. Thus, serious and strict accident check and handling were made as well.

We intensified safety education to ensure that all contractors and their personnel are safety minded. HSE risk management concept was applied in safety management on construction site. Workers who failed in examination were strictly kept out of the job site. We established and continuously improved onsite supervision, inspection and appraisal systems and intensified inspection and supervision efforts.

We followed the principle that contractors take full responsibilities for workers hired and strengthened management of all types of workers on the job site.

Environmental Protection

Sinopec always gives high priority to the environmental protection, actively develops recycling economy, pursues clean production, promotes water saving and emission reduction and strengthens waste control, in order to deliver in full its corporate social responsibility, striving for excellent performance in environmental protection.

In 2010, facing serious requirements for environmental protection at home and abroad, and decreasing quality of crude oil (average sulfur content in crude oil rose from 0.9% in 2005 to 1.21% in 2010), we tried every efforts to realize energy saving and emission reduction, flue gas de-sulfurization and below-limit emissions while maintaining production and operation volume. We managed to ensure that over 96% of discharged waste water met the discharge standard. Industrial water consumption dropped by 2% and discharged industrial wastewater decreased by 4% y-o-y. The COD in discharged wastewater dropped by 2.1% and sulfur dioxide emissions decreased by 6.9% y-o-y. No environmental pollution incidents occurred throughout the year. Compared with 2005, COD emissions dropped by 18.1%, and sulfur dioxide emissions dropped by 35.7%, completely hitting the emission reduction targets set by the central government for the 11th five-year plan period ahead of schedule.

On-going clean production

Sinopec focuses on clean production during the whole process from manufacturing to consumption, endeavors to control and reduce emissions from the very beginning so as to achieve the sustainable development of the company. In 2010, three more subsidiaries passed the acceptance of clean production by Sinopec Group. At the end of 2010, 52.5% of our refineries and chemical plants passed the acceptance. Through these efforts, awareness of environmental protection was significantly strengthened, management performance remarkably enhanced, emissions of key pollutants drastically dropped, energy and water conservation continuously improved.

More investment in environmental protection for hazards control

We invested RMB 1.483 billion in environmental protection and environmental hazards control in 2010 (excluding investment for new projects). In total, 103 specialized projects on environmental hazards control with investment of RMB 354 million, focusing on air pollution control, sewage control and provision of online monitoring equipment, etc.

We made more investment in desulfurization for coal or coke-fired furnaces. By the end of 2010, flue gas desulfurization projects in all Sinopec refineries were carried out, accumulatively using approved investment about RMB 2.7 billion. It is predicted that over 360,000 tons of sulfur emissions will be reduced annually.

In 2010, deodorization and sewage treatment projects in a number of large sewage treatment plants were approved, involving a total investment of over RMB 197 million.

After completing the oil & gas recovery projects for tank farms and gas stations in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province, and in order to ensure the success of Shanghai World Expo and Guangzhou Asian Games in 2010, we carried out oil and gas recovery at tank farms and gas stations in Guangdong Province, Shanghai, Jiangsu Province and Zhejiang Province, contributing to the environmental improvement and energy conservation.

All-round supervision on environmental protection

We strengthened environmental management on construction sites, supervised and inspected to ensure environmental impact assessment was conducted and HSE policy was fully complied with on every construction site, executed signing system during feasibility study stage of projects, and new construction projects were all implemented in an environmentally preferable manner.

Online environment monitoring plan was set up across the Company to realize real-time pollutants emission monitoring of the enterprises.

We addressed environmental issues by evaluating the environmental performance of our subsidiaries. For subsidiaries with severe environmental problems, we organized experts evaluating on site, developing and implementing pollution control plans and corrective measures so as to help them increase management level on environmental protection.

Protection and resumption of the ecological environment

Oil & gas exploration and development, construction of oil and gas pipelines inevitably cause damage to the ecological environment. Sinopec pays great attention to restoration and rehabilitation of ecosystem around abandoned wells and along the pipelines in an effort to minimize impact of production and operations on the environment.

Recycling economy development turns wastes into valuables

Sinopec actively pursues recycling economy to promote effective utilization and recycle of resources, comprehensive utilization of by-products in order to realize low consumption, low emission and high efficiency. Using dry gas from refinery in concentration units and construction of ethylene-to-ethyl benzene units can be taken as examples. In 2010, we finished dry gas recovery projects for ethylene concentration in Maoming Petrochemical and Zhenhai Petrochemical, which can recover ethylene-rich streams by 112,000 tpa.