WA Premier Roger Cook's core "Made in WA" election policy will be tested by his use of local content provisions to keep Chevron's WA engineers working in WA.
Woodside marked itself as achieving acceptable worker safety in 2024 after switching from an industry-standard metric that it had massively exceeded.
Woodside's "personal safety performance was on target," according to its 2024 annual report, as it had just one "high consequence injury" where recovery took more than 180 days.
However, Woodside's performance judged by the measure it had used for at least the past decade - the number of injuries recorded per million hours worked, or TRIR - was terrible, with a rate of 2.44, well above its target in previous years of 1.0.
A dangerous decline
Woodside's safety performance, as measured by the industry-standard TRIR, has seriously deteriorated this decade.
In 2019 and 2020, Woodside achieved a TRIR well within its target of 1.1, giving it the confidence to set a more difficult benchmark of 1.0 in 2021.
Unfortunately, the rate of injuries then almost doubled, a performance Woodside chairman Richard Goyder labelled "disappointing."
"Improving this performance is a priority in the year ahead," he said.
But the TRIR also increased in 2022 and again in 2023 when, tragically, there was the fatality of rope access technician Michael Jurman.
After the fatality, O'Neill said Woodside’s safety performance over the past two years had been below the standard it sets for itself.
"We know we must do better and are resolved to strive for a return to leading safety performance," O'Neill said.
In Woodside's 2023 annual report, O'Neill and Woodside chairman Richard Goyder both said safety must improve.
"To ensure a focus on our aim to prevent all injuries", safety was made a separate measure in the 2024 corporate scorecard used in determining management bonuses.
The contribution of safety to the total score was increased from 10 to 15 per cent. It encompassed personal safety as well as measures to avoid major process or environmental incidents.
Scoring differently
However, when Woodside calculated the revised scorecard with a heavier emphasis on safety for the first time in 2024, the industry-standard TRIR, which at 2.44 well exceeded the target of 1.0, was not used.
Instead, the target used was no more than one high-consequence injury where the worker did not return to full health in 180 days.
The new - and it appears unique - HCI metric does not measure Woodside's "aim to prevent all injuries" or allow it to determine if it had "leading safety performance" by comparing itself to other companies.
However, with one HCI in 2024, the new measure did allow Woodside to meet its target for personal safety.
Woodside quietly changed its main safety metric and avoided a 4th year of failure.
At a presentation to analysts last week, O'Neill acknowledged, "we continue to experience a number of recordable injuries" but did not mention the incident rate jumped more than 30 per cent in 2024.
"The top priority for me as Woodside CEO is that all of our people are safe at work and go home in the same condition in which they arrived," she said.
However, the new personal safety metric only tracks if workers are healthy six months after they go home after an incident.
According to Woodside's 2024 annual report, it introduced HCI to measure personal safety "to focus attention on the highest risks to people and promote learning through more transparent reporting."
Bonus bump
Woodside's 2024 safety performance, contributing 15 per cent to the scorecard, was marked a "mid-point" performance as while "personal safety performance was on target," one of the two process targets was not met.
If the previous TIRR metric had been used, exceeding the target by a factor of 2.44, the 2024 safety score, and hence management bonuses, would certainly have been lower.
Chris Donovan, spokesman for the Offshore Alliance of two unions that represents many WA oil and gas workers, said Woodside effectively diluting its metric measuring worker safety was hugely concerning.
"Did they think no one would notice?” Donovan said.
"To see that such a dilution has the effect of ensuring Woodside executives receive full bonuses for safety when Woodside’s safety record is only getting worse – including a fatality at a Woodside-operated facility in the past 18 months – is horrifying.”
Woodside was asked why its TRIR had increased so much in recent years and if shifting the goalposts to something more achievable was a bad look. The company did not provide a response.
I worked in oil & gas in commercial and engineering roles for 20 years. Since 2016 I have written for The West Australian, The Saturday Paper, RenewEconomy, Michael West, Boiling Cold and WAtoday.
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