Arya Sasol Attains Record-Low Accident Rate
The Arya Sasol Polymer Company (ASPC) has successfully achieved a record in its Recordable Accident Rate (RCR) score, aiming to further decrease the index to zero with the help of effective planning and the cooperation of its employees.
The ASPC – adhering to a common practice among international oil, gas and petrochemical companies - has been documenting recordable incidents based on the RCR classification of the American safety and health regulator, OSHA, since 2009. Accordingly, at the end of May this year, the ASPC attained a 0.03 score, equivalent to one incident in the last 12 months. The record, marks the third time the ASPC has been able to attain a 0.03 score since 2009, the first instance being in July 2018 and the second in September 2020.
Achieving a zero RCR record - corresponding to 12 months without an incident - is not an easy achievement. Although differences in employee safety culture and high risks associated with production processes and downtime maintenance activities may interfere in attempts to push the RCR index to zero, such an objective can, nonetheless, be realized with all-round effort and planning.
Therefore, the ASPC intends to achieve this record by adopting a policy of continuous safety improvement and extensive management measures. Moreover, the ASPC has successfully strived to decrease its accident rate since it began such an effort in 2008, when its RCR stood at 2.99 – only to be successfully brought to 0.64 within a year. The ASPC’s performance ever since, displays the effectiveness of its zero-harm policy.
It is worth noting that the ASPC’s RCR score (0.03) fares quite well among other leading international petrochemical companies such as TotalEnergies (0.13), DuPont (0.15), ExxonMobil (0.16), Dow Chemical (0.16), British Petroleum (0.18), Shell Global (0.2), AkzoNobel (0.24), Sasol Group (0.27), Germany’s BASF (0.3) and Norway’s Equinor (0.5).
It is necessary to explain that the ASPC’s RCR score has been calculated based on recordable accidents per man-hours and on a fixed coefficient, rendering it standard and, consequently comparable to RCR scores released annually by other reputable international companies in the oil and gas industry.
