Safety Progress

Stronger collaboration among our U.S. assets increased operational efficiency and led to more consistent implementation of safety policies and practices across our operations. In addition, we started realizing the benefits of continuous improvement from ROMS implementation. The result was a decline in our Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) for both employees and contractors to 0.53 in 2018 compared to 0.64 in 2017. A number of metrics and other aspects of safety are covered in this report, including process safety, HES training, workforce health, and emergency preparedness and response.

A superior safety record has been a hallmark of our company’s performance for many years. Yet, we’re never satisfied, and we continue to incorporate learnings from recent years to further refine the quality and safety of our operations as we move forward.

Marathon Oil compares our U.S. TRIR to 32 other large independent oil and natural gas companies that participate in the American Exploration & Production Council (AXPC). Our U.S. recordable injury rate of 0.57 for both employees and contractors in 2018 was below the AXPC average of 0.63. While Marathon Oil voluntarily includes contractors when reporting to AXPC, some companies in AXPC do not.

A team of operations leaders and safety professionals developed Marathon Oil’s refreshed Life Critical Expectations & HES Beliefs in 2018. The expectations set clear requirements on how we protect our workforce while they’re performing life critical activities, such as work at heights, hot work and energy isolation. The HES Beliefs define our actions and behaviors regarding Stop Work Authority, pre-job planning, reporting and sharing of incidents, and open communication, and make it clear that no job will be performed if we cannot protect our most important asset, our people.

The 2018 Safety Leadership Program encompassed one-day safety forums conducted with our asset leadership and half-day safety leadership courses for our frontline supervisors. At the safety forums, operations and HES leaders heard from Marathon Oil senior leaders on their commitment to safety, discussed opportunities to improve our safety culture and developed asset-level safety commitments. During the year, an estimated 125 employees from our U.S. resource plays participated in these forums.

Additionally, in the Permian Basin, where contractor issues were acute due to high activity levels, we hosted a forum attended by approximately 150 contractor personnel ranging from CEOs to frontline supervisors. Senior Marathon Oil operations and HES leaders facilitated the event, using the opportunity to better understand the safety challenges of our contract partners, and to establish shared goals and accountability for safety performance moving forward.

The safety leadership course for employee and contractor field leaders and supervisors covered how to deliver effective safety messages. The program was developed for our resource play assets, but due to positive feedback, we expanded participation to more contractors than planned. Across the enterprise, 430 employees and 693 contractors attended the course. Based on the pilot’s success, we took the safety leadership course to our asset in Equatorial Guinea in February 2019 to prepare approximately 285 employees and contractors from our Punta Europa operations for a maintenance turnaround.

Marathon Oil’s goal is to work with top-rated contractors who share our commitment to safeguarding our workforce, communities, property and the environment. In 2018, the industry faced ongoing challenges from contractors who were inexperienced or took too many risks.

As part of our risk-based approach to managing contractors, we build relationships with them and help them work to our standards for the long term. We hold them accountable for adhering to our contractor management plans, track their OSHA recordables and Serious Event Rate, conduct safety audits, and engage contractor personnel in the field and in the office. We reinforce our belief that every individual working on a Marathon Oil site has the right and obligation to “Stop the Job” if a task cannot be performed safely. While we strive to maintain a stable contractor workforce, in 2018 Marathon Oil stopped working with a number of contractors who didn’t meet our expectations and performance requirements. In some cases, we replaced large contractors with smaller companies whose HES management systems and personnel practices are more aligned with ours.

Process safety encompasses programs to prevent hydrocarbon releases that have the potential to impact people, property and the environment. It’s an integral component of our Responsible Operations Management System (ROMS). We strive to improve our process safety culture and performance, track and investigate process safety incidents and near misses, develop corrective actions and share them throughout the company. In 2018, our assets started performing bowtie risk assessments, analyzing the most prevalent process safety events (PSE) to ensure our controls are adequate.

We experienced two Tier 1 (high-consequence) PSEs and zero Tier 2 (medium-consequence) PSEs at our designated facilities in our U.S. resource plays, Marathon EG Production Limited (MEGPL), Equatorial Guinea LNG Holdings Limited (EG LNG) and the U.K. North Sea in 2018.