Major incident preparedness

Woodside maintains a comprehensive and integrated all hazards approach to major incident preparedness by applying the emergency risk management philosophy to prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from major incidents.

IMPORTANT TOPIC

Whilst prevention of major incidents is key, our capability to respond to and recover from major incidents is both a regulatory and licence to operate requirement

Focusing on the protection of our people, the environment, our assets, reputation and livelihood, Woodside maintains a tiered, global response framework, providing scalability and measured escalation to incidents or events.

Our approach1

Woodside maintains a comprehensive and integrated all hazards approach to major incident preparedness by applying the emergency risk management philosophy to prevent (where possible), prepare for, respond to and recover from major incidents.

Focusing on the protection of our people, the environment, our assets, reputation and livelihood. Woodside maintains a tiered, global response framework, providing scalability and measured escalation to disruptive incidents or events.

Our 24 hours a day, seven days a week global response capability enables the organisation to act swiftly and proportionately to incidents, with key objectives of keeping our people safe, preserving business continuity and returning impacted assets to normal, or near normal, conditions as soon as possible following the event.

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Our performance2

During 2024, our crisis and emergency management arrangements were formally activated to support a major incident. In early October 2024, the tragic death of an employee of one of OCI’s construction contractors occurred at the project site. OCI’s investigation into the incident is ongoing at this time. 

Coordinated by the Houston Incident Management Team (HIMT), the response focused on the provision of welfare support to all impacted people and collaboration with law enforcement agencies and regulators. Post incident, Woodside reviewed the effectiveness of company crisis and emergency management arrangements, resulting in the identification of some minor process improvement opportunities.

In addition to this major incident, the Corporate Incident Management Team (CIMT) and the HIMT provided incident management support for other minor incidents that occurred throughout the year.

In addition to CIMT and HIMT response efforts, Woodside’s preparedness activities included:

Operational assets

  • Weekly training activities, focusing on major incidents and environmental scenarios.
  • A major shoreline oil spill response training exercise in Dakar (Senegal), involving over 80 participants.

Corporate and Houston Incident Management Teams (CIMT and HIMT)

  • Delivery of numerous training courses for new Incident Management Team (IMT) members.
  • Weekly skills maintenance training and exercising sessions for rostered IMT members, focusing on a range of domestic and international themed scenarios.
  • A major United States Oil Spill Response exercise, led by the HIMT, in collaboration with State and Federal response organisations.
  • Numerous other CIMT and HIMT major exercises, in collaboration with operational assets, projects, and contracting companies.

Crisis Management Team (CMT)

  • One crisis exercise, focusing on the strategic implications of a major subsea drilling loss of containment incident. The extended duration exercise tested the capability of our CMT to manage the strategic business implications associated with a crisis event.

Global approach

We have made further progress in harmonising our global Crisis and Emergency Management (CEM) framework.

2024 activities

  • We harmonised our CEM Incident Management Systems (online records management programs) from two programs into one program, delivering a common system and language. The globally consistent platform has enabled a collaborative capability to respond to major incidents across our global activities and time zones.
  • We recruited and trained global response team members from within existing CIMT and HIMT teams, providing Woodside a capability to deploy trained and experienced IMT members to any of our global assets and/or office locations, to support the response to and recovery from a major incident.
  • We developed and executed a global security and CEM process verification assurance program, focused on our global assets, facilities and offices. The program provides visibility of security and CEM control health supporting our ongoing capability to manage risks and respond to incidents.

2025 activities

In 2025, we plan to deliver the following key activities:

  • Harmonise our approach to mass communications capabilities
  • Enhance and test our global response team capability
  • Enhance our business continuity management framework.

Coupled with our ongoing CEM preparedness programs, we except delivery of these key activities will position the company to remain ready and capable to collaboratively respond to and recover from major incidents across our global activities and time zones.

Footnotes

    Footnotes

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      Last updated: 23/02/2025 6:43:21 PM