Measuring Our Safety Performance

Protecting people, the environment and our assets is paramount. In 2009, Nexen reported that we had delivered our best-ever combined employee/contractor safety performance. In 2010, we improved upon this record, reducing the company’s total recordable injury frequency rate (TRIF) to 0.67 from 0.83, a 19% decrease over 2009.

We achieved this decrease primarily through a significant reduction in contractor TRIF. Contractor TRIF in 2010 was 0.80, compared to 1.04 the year before. Our employee TRIF performance remained consistent at 0.37 for both 2009 and 2010.

Despite these improved results, a contractor died in 2010 while working on a service rig at our operations in Yemen. A second worker received minor injuries in the incident. An investigation was done to identify the root causes and integrate the findings into our operations. As a result, improvements were made to strengthen training, operations control and supervision.

Total Recordable Injury Frequency Company-wide (TRIF)
(combined employee/contractor per 200,000 exposure hours)
Total Recordable Injury Frequency Company-wide (TRIF)1,2
(per 200,000 exposure hours) 2008 2009 2010
Nexen Employees 0.26 0.37 0.37
Nexen Contractors 1.27 1.04 0.80
Nexen Combined Employee/Contractor 0.97 0.83 0.67
CAPP3 Average Combined 1.08 0.84 na
CAPP Average - Employee 0.64 0.58 na
CAPP Average - Contractor 1.24 0.94 na
OGP4 Average Combined 0.42 0.35 0.34
OGP Average Employee 0.30 0.26 0.24
OGP Average Contractor 0.45 0.38 0.36
1 TRIF = (number of medical treatment cases + number of modified work cases + number of fatalities + number of lost-time accidents X 200,000) / exposure hours. Exposure hours are comprised of actual hours and hours calculated using accepted industry guidelines. Offshore exposure hours are based on 12 and 24 hour work shifts; onshore exposure hours are based on 8 and 12 hour work shifts.
2 2010 numbers include Synthetic Oil major projects and resource development.
3 Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
4 International Association of Oil & Gas Producers.

Lost Time Incident Rate1
(per 200,000 exposure hours)
2008 2009 2010
Nexen Employees 0.10 0.11 0.08
1 LTIR = Lost time incident rate is a measure of safety performance calculated as the number of incidents that caused an employee to lose time from work.