Health, Safety, and Security

In 2021, the combined Lost-Time Injury Rate (LTIR) for OMV employees and contractors was 0.57 (2020: 0.32), and our combined Total Recordable Injury Rate (TRIR) was 0.96 (2020: 0.60). We are deeply concerned about three work-related fatalities, all three related to road transportation activities of contractor companies in Austria and Romania. Managing the COVID-19 pandemic remained a high priority in 2021 on top of routine HSSE management. We focused primarily on learning from incidents throughout the whole Company: Videos, alerts, and communication campaigns were used to reach out to all employees.

In Exploration & Production, the TRIR was 0.92 (2020: 0.58). Tragically, two contractor employees died in two fatal work accidents in 2021. We also encountered 19 High Potential Incidents (HiPos) that could have resulted in serious or even fatal injuries under slightly different circumstances. All fatalities and HiPos have been thoroughly investigated, and measures were put in place to prevent reoccurrence. Contractor management was and continues to be a focus area in our HSSE efforts. We continued to focus on process safety management, and various initiatives ensured the reliability of production.

The HSSE performance of Refining & Marketing in 2021 was overshadowed by a road accident resulting in a fatality of a contractor employee. Efforts therefore went into a broad awareness campaign about road transportation safety and the development of an enhanced framework of safety requirements for future logistics contractors. Another focus area was the implementation of the process safety roadmap including two external process safety management assessments in the refineries. We encountered 23 HiPos. The TRIR in 2021 was 0.56 (2020: 0.59). Special emphasis during the year was placed on leadership engagement, safety culture, contractor management, and training on various emergency and crisis management scenarios.

In Chemicals & Materials, OMV Group’s definitions and incident reporting criteria were fully rolled out to Borealis. These are more stringent than those used previously. The business division achieved a TRIR of 2.24 (2020, Borealis only: 3.89). Occupational safety initiatives focused on further rolling out a virtual Life Saving Rules training, preventing employees from becoming infected with COVID-19, and achieving ISO 45001 certification for Borealis. Regarding process safety, the focus was on introducing the Process Safety Rules, starting a Quantitative Risk Assessment Study for hydrocarbon processing activities at Porvoo and developing a concept to improve quality of process hazard assessments. Borealis continued the positive downward trend of process safety events from 19 in 2020 to 16 in 2021.

Employee wellbeing and health are the foundation for successful company performance as they are core elements of ensuring the ability to work. The year 2021 was dominated by the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. Our medical teams and service providers were challenged to support the emergency management teams in updating and implementing pandemic preparedness plans, guidelines, and health information while also supporting COVID-19-infected employees at home and in hospitals. In addition, OMV continued its long tradition of offering healthcare and preventive health programs, such as cardiovascular disease prevention programs, voluntary health checks, vaccinations (mainly flu and in some countries COVID-19), and virtual health hours, which far exceed local statutory requirements.

During 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic also brought significant challenges to safety management. At operational level, we implemented preventive and business-continuity-related measures such as strictly separated teams in key areas, hygiene measures, and constant awareness building. Despite travel limitations and thanks to digital communication and collaboration tools, we conducted several key safety-related activities:

• We continued broad communication about the Life Saving Rules by means of videos with senior management statements to remind our employees about simple rules to prevent the hazards that have the greatest potential to cause serious injuries.
• All incidents at level 3 and above and HiPos were investigated, and lessons-learned reports were communicated throughout the organization. Improvement initiatives were developed and closely monitored with our HSSE reporting tool Synergi.
• As part of our Safety Culture program, we conducted several workshops on “making HSSE personal” at different levels of the organization. The half-yearly meetings with the program owner were conducted online.
• Contractor HSSE management is key to OMV Group’s safety performance. We updated our group-wide regulation and continued training of beneficiaries and procurement staff on the internal regulations framework. We conducted strategic supplier meetings with the main contractors to share information, experience, and expectations.
• We further developed a harmonized set of KPIs and a dashboard for process safety. We supported and followed up on the implementation of process safety road maps in our ventures, assets, and refineries. In our new Integrated Risk Register, we implemented a novel approach for analyzing and prioritizing process safety risks in order to ensure that investments effectively lead to a significant reduction of risks. The OMV Group process safety network, a large online collaboration platform, grew further (>200 participants), and gathered quarterly to exchange information and experiences in virtual meetings. Senior management also attended.
• We undertook a deep analysis and review of 15 group-wide effective HSSE regulations and our cloud-based HSSE reporting tool in order to prepare and achieve progress on a systematic alignment between OMV Group and Borealis.

An unstable geopolitical environment combined with complex and enduring regional conflicts remained a consistent security focus throughout 2021. Corporate Security continued to monitor these geopolitical situations, accelerating OMV’s understanding of strategic events, to proactively identify any emergent threat that might intersect with business planning. This included incidents of armed conflict, civil unrest, targeted activism, and criminality at local, national, regional, and international levels.

Our crisis management and resilience procedures assisted in the effective management of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. Local Emergency Management Teams worked closely with their corporate counterparts to ensure local responses aligned with the Company’s pandemic strategy.

We updated our proven security management system in 2021, enabling us to anticipate or respond to a broad spectrum of geopolitical, regional, or isolated security incidents. The security risk assessment platform continued to provide real-time oversight of asset risk exposure levels as influenced by geopolitical or security events. Despite various geopolitical and pandemic challenges, Corporate Security continued to deliver global operational support, governance, and oversight, and will maintain a comparable and effective security strategy allowing OMV to operate despite converging asymmetric threats.

OMV is committed to upholding human rights in all activities. To this end, OMV aims to join the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights (VPSHR), an initiative focused on human rights, public safety and security, and the interaction between companies and private and public security. Corporate Security will undertake a VPSHR pre-qualification review to determine the feasibility of attaining full accreditation in the coming years.