Health, Safety, Security and Environment
Our vision is to promote health as an essential value, protected through individual responsibility, but powered by OMV Petrom as a responsible employer. In order to accomplish that, we have implemented high healthcare standards and health promotion campaigns that address the most important health impact issues by taking into account the OMV Petrom employees’ health profile, all of these being gathered under one branded concept, the Health:ON! Platform, which has been active since 2014.
With its attractive and interactive communication, the platform aims to change the employees’ attitude from consumers to co-producers of health, while encouraging the voluntary utilization of the health programs, according to their specific needs. The Platform covers services and benefits related to occupational health, prevention, curative health and emergency health.
HSSE Policy (PDF, 163,0 KB)
Supported United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):
SDG 3 – Good Health and Well-Being
SDG 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation
SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth
More details can be found in the interactive online sustainability report or on OMV Petrom's Sustainability Report 2022.
OMV Petrom complies with the national legislation and adheres to the highest safety standards in order to provide safe workplaces for its employees and contractors and to achieve its own vision “Zero Harm – No Losses”. Our Safety Management System is built on the HSSE Policy, the HSSE Directive, corporate regulations and divisional specific standards, procedures and work instructions. All those together with our firm belief that a strong safety culture is essential for all of our operations, create the framework for a solid safety management system and the foundation for the risk management process. Our risk management process is based on a precautionary, systematic approach, aimed the identification and minimization of risks before they have a possible negative impact on people, business and reputation as well as on the environment and society.
More details can be found in the interactive online sustainability report or on OMV Petrom's Sustainability Report 2022.
Throughout OMV Petrom, Security and Resilience Department activity starts with the proactive identification of business needs and requirements based on which we are responsible for designing and implementing an integrated framework of processes, regulations, tools and technologies to enhance Security & Resilience across company value chain.
Security and Resilience Department shall establish and maintain a sustainable protection of people, assets and reputation against intentional malicious threats and continuously improve organizational preparedness to adequately respond to and recover from serious incidents.
The Security function ensures the integration of the best security practices at OMV Petrom level and supports business, not only through the delivery of its strategic objectives, but also on an operational basis. A special focus is dedicated to managing the provision of operational security services and their effectiveness.
The Resilience function enables the effective recovery of operations and the preservation of the OMV Petrom brand in case of a significant incident, minimizing potential negative impacts on our business and our people.
Our Security & Resilience services are in line with OMV Petrom Vision “Zero Harm – No Losses” that guides our behavior, actions and decisions focused on 3 main directions:
- increase effectiveness & efficiency of our security operations by centrally managing the provisions of cross-divisional security operations.
- ensure the detection and prevention of significant business threats
- develop resilience to respond and recover from events with negative impact and develop, maintain and continuously improve business continuity framework.
SDG 3 – Good Health and Well-Being
SDG 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation
SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth
SDG 9 – Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
More details can be found in the interactive online sustainability report or on OMV Petrom's Sustainability Report 2022.
Management approach
We aim at minimizing our environmental impact throughout the entire lifecycle of operations. We are committed to acting for pollution prevention, reduction of emissions, and efficient use of energy and natural resources.
Overall environmental management
The Environmental Management Standard of OMV Petrom Group establishes the key responsibilities and requires that all relevant activities (including investment, acquisitions, and divestment) implement an Environmental Management System (EMS) consistent with ISO 14001 and adhere to the minimum requirements listed (including energy use, air emissions, GHG and climate change, water, waste, and biodiversity management). Our Environmental Management System that is certified according to ISO 14001 covers around 50% of OMV Petrom Group’s employees.
OMV Petrom raises the environmental awareness of employees through various internal communication tools, including campaigns. On the World Environment Day 2020, we conveyed biodiversity messages in the larger context of climate change. We addressed the water topic on the World Water Week. The Petrobrazi refinery implemented the campaign “Get involved in emission reduction, secure yourself a better future.”
Environmental risks and opportunities include regulatory, operational, reputational, and financial drivers and specifically relate to climate change, water availability for operations, and the impact of energy, climate, and water policies. The management of environment-related risks is part of OMV Petrom’s Enterprise-Wide Risk Management (EWRM) processes.
Oil spills are a critical environmental issue for our industry. Spills management is defined as the prevention of spills in operations and other spills (e.g., caused by sabotage or natural hazards) and the management and remediation of spills resulting from an incident. In 2020, we recorded no major hydrocarbon spill (2019: one major spill).
The OMV Petrom Group Environmental Management Standard requires compliance with all applicable environmental laws and regulations, or other requirements, and alignment with internationally accepted best practices. In 2020, our total environmental costs (accounting for environmental protection expenditure, including depreciation and environmental investments for assets put into operation) amounted to EUR 148.82 mn.
Water Management
We aim at reducing water consumption, utilize water resources efficiently and treat wastewater appropriately. Local regulatory and river basin authorities are involved to ensure that OMV Petrom is compliant with local environmental regulations and has obtained all the required permits, both for water withdrawal, use and discharge. In the case of new construction sites, we follow the regulatory EIA process (Environmental Impact Assessment), which requires public consultation with stakeholders on environmental topics, including water.
In 2020, in total we withdrew 59,362 megalitres of water, consisting of groundwater, surface water, water from public supply, seawater and produced water (2019: 17,930 megalitres, not included produced water). The Freshwater Withdrawal Intensity Index of OMV Petrom’s operations slightly decreased by 0.16% in 2020 vs. 2019.
We monitor the impact of our activities (pollutant levels) on both groundwater and surface waters. The main indicator tested is Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons (TPH). Monitoring is done annually or twice per year according to the permit’s requirements. The pollutants concentrations (including oil concentration) in the treated waters discharged to natural waters are measured in line with water legislation (NTPA 001/2002 - Norms regarding the Maximum Allowable Discharge Concentrations for pollutants in municipal and industrial wastewaters discharged into natural waters).
Waste Management
We manly produce solid and liquid wastes, including oily sludge, waste chemicals, spent catalysts and construction debris. Our approach to waste management follows a hierarchy of priorities, namely, first prevent waste where possible; then reuse, recover and recycle it; and only as a last resort, dispose of it safely.
In 2020, OMV Petrom generated 537,855 t of total waste (2019: 527,928 t). We valorized (diverted from disposal by recycling, recovery and preparing for use) 77% of the total waste generated last year. The total waste amounts cover both production waste and waste from one-time projects.
Biodiversity
All OMV Petrom activities must be conducted in such a way as to cause minimal disturbance to protected areas and local flora and fauna. In the event of significant observed or predicted impacts, we apply the mitigation hierarchy, and action planning gives priority to avoidance and minimization over restoration and offsetting of the impact.
OMV Petrom’s activities are partially overlapping with around 3% of the number of Romania’s Natural Protected Areas. Most of them are Sites of Community Importance and Special Protected Areas as defined by the Governance Ordinance no. 57/2005 on protection of natural areas, habitats, flora and wild fauna. Our company assesses the risks posed by our operations to these Natural Protected Areas according to ISO 14001, on a systematic basis. In certain situations, we also commit external specialized resources to assess the biodiversity conservation status as we did, for example, with “Padurea cu pini de la Moinesti” and “Mlastina Satchinez” Natural Protected Areas. In 2020, OMV Petrom, in partnership with Oceanic Club, finalized the development of a mobile application, to enable employees to easily identify protected species observed within their operational boundaries.
In 2020, to mitigate the operational risks to the Danube Delta Nature Reserve, we implemented a project for rerouting a section of 2.5 km of the main oil pipeline from the Central Offshore Platform to the Midia Terminal in Exploration & Production’s Petromar Asset.
More details can be found in the interactive online sustainability report or on OMV Petrom's Sustainability Report 2022.