BP 2012 Annual Report Download - page 24

Our performance
2012 saw BP build on the strong foundations laid in the previous year. Despite
facing major uncertainties, we made progress against our 10-point plan and
are reshaping our portfolio to increase efficiency, margins and cash flows.
During the year we made progress in our priority
areas of enhancing safety and risk management,
restoring trust by meeting our commitments in
the Gulf of Mexico and delivering higher returns
for shareholders, as evidenced by the increases in
quarterly dividend announced in 2012 (see
Dividends on page 25). We worked to resolve the
uncertainties facing the company in the US and
Russia. We continued the major programme of
divestments announced in 2010, which we
believe is making BP a more efficient organization.
And we made investments in areas where we
believe we have advantages and higher margin
opportunities. Safety remained our number one
priority throughout the year, across the company.
We reached the majority of the 2012 milestones
that we set out when we launched our 10-point
plan in October 2011 (see 2012 in summary) and
believe we are on course to improve our
margins and cash flow by 2014.
Safety
We continued our work to enhance safety and
risk management in everything we do. In
personal safety, sadly, we had four fatalities in
our operations during 2012. We reported 43 Tier
1 process safety events in 2012 and 74 in 2011.
Loss of primary containment was reduced by
19% compared with 2011. We continued our
programme of major upstream turnarounds,
with 30 turnarounds completed in 2012. We
expect to carry out up to 22 further turnarounds
in 2013.
Over the past 12 months, our safety and
operational risk function (S&OR) continued to
drive improvements to operational safety and
reliability with enhanced independent
assurance, improved engineering and operating
practices, and training and coaching
programmes. Our single global wells
organization is driving greater consistency
across our operations. Our performance and
reward system is reinforcing that everyone at
BP is responsible for safe operations.
BP’s operating management system (OMS)
provides us with a systematic and controlled
approach to the way the company’s operating
facilities are managed. All of our operations,
with the exception of those recently acquired,
are now applying OMS and working to conform
to these group-wide standards and practices.
We continue to make progress on all of the
remaining recommendations from the Bly Report.
As of December 2012, the total number of
completed recommendations was 14 out of 26.
Independent advice and monitoring
In June 2012 we appointed Carl Sandlin to
track the company’s implementation of the
recommendations of the Bly Report, our internal
investigation into the Deepwater Horizon incident.
He brings extensive experience in overseeing
global drilling operations. In this role, he will
provide an objective and independent assessment
to the board of BP’s progress against the report’s
recommendations. He will also observe and
report on process safety culture.
Following legal settlements with the US
government, BP has agreed to take additional
actions, enforceable by the court, to further
In 2012 our refineries – particularly Toledo
(above) and Whiting in the US – benefited from
a location advantage, as they were able to
access discounted crudes.
BP has been in Azerbaijan since 1992 and is the
largest foreign investor in the country. Our
assets include the West Chirag production and
drilling platform (right) which is due to start up
in late 2013.
Safety
For more information on our safety
performance see pages 46-50.
Business review: Group overview
BP Annual Report and Form 20-F 2012
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