Marathon Petroleum refineries receive AFPM safety awards
Business News
Safety, Award, Anacortes, Washington, El Paso, Texas, Galveston Bay, Texas- The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers recently honored Marathon Petroleum refineries in Anacortes, Washington; El Paso, Texas; and Texas City, Texas, at its annual safety awards.
- Anacortes and El Paso were recognized for their overall safety performance in 2022, and the Galveston Bay refinery in Texas City won an innovation award.
- Anacortes ranked in the top 5% of facilities, and El Paso’s performance was in the top 10%.
Safety achievements of three Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC) refineries have placed them among the best of all facilities across the U.S. refining and petrochemical industries. At its recent safety awards, the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) presented an Elite Gold Award to MPC’s Anacortes, Washington, refinery for 2022 safety performance in the top 5% of facilities; an Elite Silver Award to MPC’s El Paso, Texas, refinery for 2022 performance in the top 10%; and an Innovation Award to MPC’s Galveston Bay refinery in Texas City, Texas, for implementing an impactful safety initiative.
“We are extremely proud of these refinery teams for maintaining such high levels of safety performance during a demanding year when our refining system was running at a 96% utilization rate to meet global energy needs,” said Refining Executive Vice President Tim Aydt.
Leading programs and performance
To meet the Elite Gold and Elite Silver selection criteria, winning facilities must have industry-leading safety programs and engagement efforts that target leadership, employees and contractors. They also must have recordable incident rates for both employees and contractors that are far below industry averages and no process safety events that resulted in recordable injuries, off-site impacts or required notification to the National Response Center.
The Anacortes refinery was among only 15 facilities to receive an Elite Gold Award this year. It’s the second consecutive Elite Gold Award for Anacortes, following the refinery’s Elite Gold Award for 2016 performance and two previous Elite Silver Awards. The El Paso refinery was one of only 12 facilities this year to earn an Elite Silver Award, which was the site’s first.
Safety is foundational and the first priority in everything we do. We continually strive to find ways of strengthening it wherever we can.
Innovative analysis
The Galveston Bay refinery’s Innovation Award recognized a screening program the refinery implemented to increase pre-emptive investigations of low-level process safety events. Based on principles of the AFPM Safety Matrix, a documentation tool was developed for recording incident details to identify trends over time that could indicate a growing risk of safety hazards among particular tasks. Trend data determine when pre-emptive investigations are justified as part of broader efforts to decrease low-level incidents and prevent larger incidents from occurring in the first place.
“Safety is foundational and the first priority in everything we do,” said Director of Refining Safety, Security and Process Safety Management Fritz Kin. “We continually strive to find ways of strengthening it wherever we can.”