Qatargas’ Laffan Refinery (LR) has achieved two significant safety milestones by completing two consecutive years of operations without any total recordable injury (TRI) and more than six years of operations without any lost time incident (LTI) since its startup in September 2009.
The Laffan Refinery is operated by Qatargas on behalf of Qatar Petroleum, Cosmo, ExxonMobil, Idemitsu, Total, Marubeni and Mitsui shareholders.
It is the largest condensate refinery in the world with a capacity of 160,600 bpd. This will scale up to 306,600 bpd with the Laffan Refinery 2 (LR2 expansion project) expected to be completed in the third quarter of this year.
The high-value products of the refinery include naphtha, kerojet, ultra-low sulphur diesel, propane and butane.
“This safety milestone achievement is the result of the continuous commitment to safety by the Qatargas leadership and workforce alike and adopting an integrated approach to safety that involves working in a cooperative manner to ensure the health and safety of all employees and contractors,” a Qatargas release said.
The TRI achievement was possible thanks to a commitment to strengthen the incident and injury free (IIF) culture in the company and a collective cooperation between all divisions involved in operation, maintenance, support functions and contractors with a common clear target of continuous focus on personal and process safety, the statement said.  
Several elements of the integrated approach to safety in Laffan Refinery were successfully implemented with specific and recurrent tasks to operations, regular multi-discipline meetings and plant visits focusing on SHE (safety, health and environment) matters, the continuous reinforcement of the IIF culture through dedicated talks with all working personnel in the plant sharing best practices and lessons learnt, a regular recognition of safety findings and safe behaviours, an active reporting of all near misses and incidents, the strict follow-up of the implementation of all relevant corrective actions.
Laffan Refinery’s shared values include “I will not get hurt”, “we all go back home safe and sound”, and “if it is not safe, I will not do it.”
Since it started production, the refinery has produced as of end-2015 a total of 153mn barrels of naphta, 106mn barrels of Kerojet, 43mn barrels of gasoil and 13mn barrels of LPG.
A total of 880 ships have so far been loaded (398 Naphta, 382 Kerojet and 100 Gasoil), i.e. with a total shipped quantity of 34.1mn tonnes.
Late last year, Qatargas had initiated a water recycling facility at Laffan Refinery 2.

Qatar CPI up 0.6% in February
Qatar’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) has shown a marginal increase of 0.6% month-on-month in February estimated at 107.6, the Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics (MDPS) has said.
Compared to February, an increase of 3.3% has been registered in the CPI of February 2016, MDPS said.
An analysis of CPI for February compared with January shows respective indices have risen by 3% in the recreation and culture (1.7%); miscellaneous goods and services (0.4%); housing, water, electricity and gas and 0.3% in food and beverages sectors.
A decline in prices is also noticed in the clothing and footwear group by 1.1%; transport by 0.4% and the restaurants and hotels segment by 1.3% each.  
The other groups, tobacco; furniture and household equipment; health; communication, and education have remained flat in February.
MDPS said the 3.3% CPI increase in February was primarily due to the “increasing prices seen” in the eight groups: recreation and culture by 9.4%; education by 7.1%; housing, water, electricity and gas by 5.7%; transport by 2.1%; furniture and household equipment by 1.7%; restaurants and hotels by 0.9%; miscellaneous goods and services by 0.4%, and communication by 0.2%.
Also, there has been a decrease in price levels in other groups such as food and beverages by 1.3%; health by 0.3%, and clothing and footwear’ by 0.1%.  No change has been recorded in the tobacco group, MDPS said. The February CPI, excluding the housing, water, electricity and gas segment, stood at 105.4, an  increase by 0.5%, when compared to January, and an increase of 2.5% to the CPI of January, 2015, the report said.