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Safety is Our Foundation
For Success
Safety means our workers go home every day to their families and our communities know we are dedicated to keeping them safe.
Tirelessly Focused on Safety
At Valero, we believe that safety and reliability are extremely important, not only for the protection of our employees and communities, and the cultural values we aspire to as a company, but also for operational success, as a decrease in the number of employee and process safety events should generally reduce unplanned shutdowns and increase the operational reliability of our refineries and plants.
This, in turn, should also translate into a safer workplace with fewer environmental incidents and stronger community relations.
We strive to improve safety and reliability performance by offering year-round safety training programs for our employees and contractors, and by seeking to promote the same expectations and culture of safety.
We also seek to enhance our safety performance by conducting safety audits, quality assurance visits, and comprehensive safety and risk assessments at our facilities.
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Beyond Compliance: Leading the Way for Voluntary Protection
Our participation in the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) exemplifies our consistent pursuit of going beyond regulatory requirements by voluntarily submitting to robust safety certifications and audits. OSHA approves VPP Star Site status only if the facility demonstrates that enhanced safety systems have been implemented and embraced in a collaborative way by leaders and employees. Sites are reassessed by OSHA every three to five years in order to maintain their VPP status.
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Safety is One of Our Guiding Principles
The health, safety and well-being of our employees, contractors and the communities where we operate remain our top priority. Safety is our foundation for success.
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Stewardship, Safety
and Reliability
Through innovation, we are advancing environmental stewardship, process safety and reliability.
Environmental Stewardship
At Valero, we are focused on maintaining our operations in an environmentally responsible manner; investing in low-carbon fuels production and renewable energy projects that contribute toward reducing companywide GHG emissions; and participating in ecological and conservation projects.
Process Safety
Valero once again achieved high refinery utilization rates, resulting from another excellent performance in process safety and reliability, which are essential to curb environmental incidents and improve safety.
Reliability
Our best ever 97.4% refining mechanical availability in 2023 represents highly reliable refinery operations. Excellent performance in this metric reflects our ability to avoid unplanned downtime, minimize environmental impacts, implement our structured turnaround planning process and ensure efficient use of resources.
Emergency Preparedness
and Response
With refineries along coastlines and ethanol plants in the U.S. Midwest, Valero has long evaluated and prepared for physical risks to its facilities from natural disasters and weather events. Our emergency preparedness and response programs are focused on the mitigation of these risks.
Check out our ESG Report for additional information on Valero’s emergency response programs.
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Emergency Management Planning Our company-wide emergency management process is designed to assess potential risks posed to our people and operations and implement solutions.
- Emergency response plans at each facility that comply with all local, state and federal regulations and are regularly updated with third-party assessments to ensure excellence.
- Certifying equipment and facilities are maintained in fully functional condition and are readily available along with trained personnel when needed for emergency response.
- Ensuring qualified emergency response teams with strong relationships with third-party response personnel are present on-site.
- Performing regular drills and assessments to promote response readiness and alignment with our Goal Zero program.
- Allocating critical capital resources to emergency planning and response in the strategic planning and capital budget processes to make our facilities efficient and resilient.
- Employing the use of emerging technologies to optimize decision-making and response execution.
STAR Metric
The STAR (Safety Tracking and Recognition) Metric is our safety program for our ethanol plants. This program recognizes top performing ethanol plants in five key areas:
- Process Safety
- Reliability
- Environmental
- Rail Safety
- Policy and Procedure Compliance
Each quarter we recognize plants achieving zero incidents in all five areas. Plants that go four consecutive quarters without an incident earn a Super STAR award.
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Goal Zero Safety Program
Our Goal Zero program is designed to eliminate incidents and injuries in six focus areas by taking a data-driven risk-based approach.
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Safety Data Sheets
Safety data sheets provide, in a standard format, product safe use and handling information regarding potential hazards, and how to respond to emergencies.
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Safety Stories
Safety is integrated into every aspect of what we do at Valero. We instill safety and reliability at every facility to push beyond regulatory compliance to operational excellence.
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Protecting Our Environment and Our Neighbors We hold ourselves to the highest standards of safety, responsible operations, and care about the environment, our employees, and our communities.
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Environmental Stewardship
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