Preventing Spills

We believe that we have responsibility not only towards our employees, but also towards the environment and community we live in. Therefore we regard spill protection as one of the key areas of environmental protection.

During crude oil and product transportation via pipelines, land, railway or water the most significant hazard is land and surface or groundwater pollution that may occur from accidental release. This can be caused by joint failure, corrosion, technological or human errors, unpredictable incidents or even deliberate damage to pipes and/or infrastructure.

MOL Group started the rehabilitation of its production and transportation pipelines back in 1996, including regular complex corrosion verification and developing cathode protection. The cathode protection system is operated remotely. We also conduct regular air and ground track monitoring and continuously control pressure, operating a well functioning troubleshooting system.

Our SD&HSE performance monitoring and reporting system operated at the Group level includes a lagging indicator (named “Spills”) which is defined as the uncontrolled release of hazardous materials exceeding 1 cubic meter to the external environment.

Figure: Total number of spills in MOL Group


Spills Unit 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Number of Spills pcs 13 11 7 8 3 12 17
Volume of Spills m3 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. 912.2 244.7

In 2009 we had 17 spills of above 1 m3, resulting in a total volume of 245 m3 lost material, which is less than third of last year’s spilled volume.

Primarily affected businesses were Logistics, Refining and Exploration and Production. Compared to 2008, at Logistics there was no major pipeline failure and consequently the number of spills has been reduced, and their average volume decreased to a fifth of the amount lost (altogether four cases resulting in 170 m3 of loss in this department). From the Refining department’s six spills (total volume of 59 m3) the largest happened at a crude storage area in wintertime: all 45 m3 of leaked and subsequently frozen material was collected without any environmental consequences.
Our upstream division witnessed some small (below 1 m3), often only oily water spills around the production areas. Here, a total of 7 spills of over 1 m3 occurred, with 15.65 m3 of total material loss.
In 2009 we continued replacing certain pipeline sections, similarly to the practice followed in past years, in order to reduce the number of failures and irregularities.

As a contribution to the enhancement of the process safety of our operations we have started using a PSM programmed for monitoring and reporting "Loss Of Primary Containment" (LOPC) cases. The threshold (above 10 kg) is chosen to be low enough so that LOPC can act as a cost-effective “leading” indicator for major incidents resulting in spills. LOPC is a best fit for our E&P operations where numerous small spills may result from hundreds of kilometers of local production piping.

For more information about our SD performance in 2009 please visit the SD section of the MOL Group Annual Report, 2009, or click here.