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 a regulatory and license 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 crises.

Our approach¹

In 2023, members of Woodside's Executive and broader employees experienced unlawful incidents by external parties at the corporate Woodside headquarters, the Woodside Annual General Meeting and private homes. Woodside condemns unlawful acts that are intended to threaten, harm, intimidate or disrupt our employees or any other member of the community going about their daily lives. Such actions are a burden on the emergency services whose job it is to keep us safe, and unnecessarily impact the everyday lives of people that live in the communities where we are active.

Our approach to such incidents enables the organisation to act swiftly and proportionately to incidents aiming to keep people safe, preserve business continuity and return impacted assets to normal or near normal conditions as soon as possible following the event.

This section refers to current intentions, plans or stated targets (where applicable). It also outlines information regarding our Management System and relevant processes and procedures. Where we refer to our activities without reference to a previous calendar year or using present tense, the relevant content may be updated from time to time at our discretion but no reliance should be placed by the reader on this page being up-to-date. We also recommend checking our Announcements page regarding our most recent business activities.

Our performance¹

During 2023, our crisis and emergency management arrangements were formally activated to support a major incident (fatality) that occurred on the North Rankin Complex.

Coordinated by the Corporate Incident Management Team (CIMT), the response focussed on the provision of welfare support to all impacted people, 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 CIMT and the Houston Incident Management Team (HIMT) provided incident management support for other incidents that occurred throughout the year.

In addition to CIMT and HIMT response efforts, our focus on preparedness activities remained high. Woodside’s preparedness activities included:

Operational assets

Weekly training activities, focusing on major incidents and environmental scenarios.

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.
Numerous Level 2 major exercises, in collaboration with operational assets, projects, and contracting companies.

Crisis Management Team (CMT)

Two crisis exercises, focusing on strategic implications of a major cyber and security incident. Both exercises tested the capability and global connectivity of our CMT, with members participating concurrently in Perth and Houston.

This section refers to our performance within a specific time period. Please note that the relevant year, where the activity applies, is stated where appropriate. Where we refer to our activities without reference to a previous calendar year or using present tense, the relevant content may be updated from time to time at our discretion but no reliance should be placed by the reader on this page being up-to-date. We also recommend checking our Announcements page regarding our most recent business activities.

Global approach

Following the merger with BHP’s petroleum business in 2022, we have made progress in harmonising our global Crisis & Emergency Management (C&EM) framework.

2023 activities

We harmonised our company incident management framework to align with the Incident Command System (ICS) framework, delivering a common system, language and process. The common framework has enabled a collaborative capability to respond to major incidents across our global activities and time zones.
We broadened the scope and capabilities of the Gulf of Mexico Incident Management Team (GoM IMT), into a Houston Incident Management Team (HIMT), which mirrors the Corporate Incident Management Team (CIMT), providing a trained all hazards response capability supporting all assets, office locations and risks throughout the Americas and Africa region.
We redesigned our C&EM competency training courses delivering a globally aligned, consistent and fit for risk program, to ensure our response personnel are prepared to respond to major incidents.
We developed a Global Response Team (GRT) process, which will provide Woodside capability to deploy a small number of trained and experienced Incident Management Team members to any of our global assets and or office locations, to support the response to or recovery from a major incident.

2024 activities

In 2024, we plan to deliver the following key activities:

Harmonise our C&EM Incident Management Systems (online records management programs) from two programs into one program.
Recruit and train Global Response Team members. Members will be sourced from within existing CIMT and HIMT teams.
Harmonise and enhance our company C&EM and Hydrocarbon Spill Preparedness Assurance programs into a common, fit for purpose, global assurance program.

Coupled with our ongoing C&EM preparedness programs, delivery of these key activities aims to ensure the company remains ready and capable to collaboratively respond to and recover from major incidents across our global activities and time zones.