Protecting the safety and well-being of our employees, contractors, communities and customers is one of Cheniere’s core values and top priorities. Our leadership team champions the ongoing development of a strong safety culture through regular engagement and communication with our workforce. Our commitment is embedded into our health, safety and environmental policy and formal health and safety management system. This management system is integrated into the Cheniere Integrated Management System (CIMS) — an enterprise-wide system for managing risks and maximizing continuous improvement across key functional areas of our operations — which promotes better consistency, accountability, and performance across our operations.
Health & safety
- Our responsibility
- Health and safety
Occupational health and safety
We support the development of a safety-first culture by empowering every employee to identify and communicate potential health and safety risks, and by providing site- and role-specific training. Our approach is underpinned by CIMS, which includes a comprehensive set of standards and procedures that set out how occupational health and safety is managed across our business. These standards and procedures are aligned with relevant Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) requirements. To drive continuous improvement, we set annual health and safety performance targets, which are tied to our annual incentive program for all employees and executives. We have exceeded our safety target every year since first publishing one in 2017.
We build a safety-first culture across our workforce through a range of processes and initiatives including:
- Lifesaving rules to operationalize our guiding safety principles of controlling work, controlling energy and controlling equipment.
- Hazard identification and mitigation including daily hazard reviews and pre-job assessments.
- Stop work authority for all employees and contractors.
- Safety incident, near miss and high potential incident tracking and reporting.
- Enterprise-wide safety training based on a role-specific qualification and competency matrix.
- Contractor safety management including pre-qualification and ongoing assessment processes.
Process safety
As outlined in our enterprise-wide integrated management system, we follow robust process safety management standards to reduce the likelihood and severity of potential incidents. We focus on maintaining the integrity and effectiveness of the equipment and processes that underpin our operations, including managing unplanned or uncontrolled releases of hazardous materials. Key elements of our approach include:
- Managing process safety across the life cycle of our facilities — from the earliest planning stages through construction, operations and ongoing maintenance — to help us avoid events before they occur.
- Undertaking regular hazard analyses and related risk mitigation actions.
- Tracking process safety events and high potential incidents.
- Managing asset integrity following our formal Asset Integrity Standard.
Incident management and emergency response
We actively plan for a wide range of potential incidents that could disrupt business continuity or pose a threat to our employees, contractors, host communities and the environment. This includes unplanned or uncontrolled product releases, fires, severe weather and cybersecurity attacks. We have a tiered emergency response framework integrating activities from the executive to local level. We maintain site-specific emergency response plans (ERPs) that outline relevant roles and responsibilities and provide step-by-step guidance for everyone participating in the incident response.
The VP of health, safety and environmental (HSE) oversees HSE compliance, as well as health and safety performance and strategy. The VP of HSE is supported by an executive safety committee made up of leaders from across the company. The committee is responsible for strategic planning, the facilitation of safe working practices and the promotion of our safety culture. Management reports to the board on HSE performance and the implementation of strategic initiatives on a quarterly basis.
Our corporate Health, Safety and Environmental Policy articulates Cheniere’s commitments, outlines our expectations of employees and contractors and supports continuous improvement. In 2021, we integrated our existing health and safety management system into the Cheniere Integrated Management System (CIMS), which coordinates the management of all core business functions required to support our HSE performance, operational excellence and reliability. This integration will streamline work processes across functions, while establishing a common framework for risk and opportunity assessment, management and performance assurance. Our safety management systems cover our own employees and contractors who work on our sites.
We use a risk-based assurance and audit process to assess our health and safety management systems, policy and performance and to identify opportunities to improve our processes and programs. We conduct ongoing assurance including site-level self-assessments, process verification and management reviews by site leadership teams.
We follow a robust vetting process for all vessels that interact with Cheniere personnel and assets. Our primary focus for marine safety is identifying, managing and mitigating potential risks that may occur during the arrival, loading and departure of vessels from our terminals, including potential incidents such as collision, fire or injuries.
We take an active role in supporting safe marine operations and engage regularly with stakeholders across the shipping value chain, either independently or through active participation in industry bodies such as the Society of International Gas Tanker and Terminal Operators and the Oil Companies International Marine Forum, among others.
We host annual workshops for LNG carrier owners and operators to convey our expectations regarding safety, security, environmental and operational standards, and we receive feedback from participants on subjects such as maritime security, environmental monitoring and compliance and technological advancements.