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.

Spills	Unit	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010 w/o INA	2010 with INA
Number of Spills	pcs	13	11	7	8	3	12	17	15	26
Volume of Spills	m3	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.	912.2	244.7	144.4	186.2

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.

For more information about spills can be found in MOL Group’s Annual Reports: 2008, 2009, 2010.