10 Safety

Gasunie manages and maintains networks of pipelines and installations used to transport and store hazardous substances, currently methane and soon also hydrogen and CO₂. Gasunie employees and those of our contractors work in potentially hazardous process conditions, on projects that are complex in nature, and are sometimes under pressure to get the work done quickly. Unsafe working conditions can result in serious accidents.

Work safety

In our efforts to achieve our safety objective, we meet high health and safety standards. Identifying, reducing and controlling risks during the works is a core element in all our activities. Our safety policy applies in full to all our employees and all contractor employees, regardless of the type of work they do. This value chain responsibility is a unifying element in our safety policy. When a contractor performs work on behalf of Gasunie, the same standards apply to them as for Gasunie’s own staff. All works must be carried out safely. The contractor and its employees must be familiar with the Gasunie Safety Policy and comply with that policy.

Our own employees and contractor employees are exposed to safety risks: they work in an environment where there are heavy objects, machinery, and hazardous process conditions. The work is often complex in nature and/or involves short lead times. Work may only start once the (foreseeable) safety, health and environmental risks have been identified and appropriate control measures taken. We carry out our work safety policy by:

• working in accordance with the prescribed safety rules, including the Principles of Safe Working Practices, with the aim of having a proactive safety culture and proactive safety behaviour; 
• ensuring that our own employees and workers engaged from outside the company are adequately trained and instructed and have adequate supervision; 
• embedding safety from the design phase, creating safe working conditions by implementing technical and organisational control (‘safety by design’);
• accepting ISO 45001 certification instead of VCA company certification.

External safety

The aim of external safety is to minimise and control the risks for people living, working or recreating in the vicinity of Gasunie infrastructure, and to minimise and control environmental risks stemming from the release of hazardous substances from the infrastructure. In the area of external safety, we take measures to ensure safety at all times in the vicinity of our assets, including by:

• complying with standards set by the government and regulatory authorities based on agreed calculation methodologies;
• creating a level of process safety that ensures that we meet the failure rates agreed with the government and regulatory authorities; and
• setting up pipeline inspections and supervision to prevent damage to assets.

Process safety

To guarantee the safety of our processes, we ensure that our infrastructure is correctly designed, constructed, managed, maintained, operated and dismantled. We endeavour to prevent loss of control over the entire service life of our assets. This policy is implemented by:

• ensuring the technically safe and ergonomic design and construction of our plants, installations and pipelines, as well as the safe management and maintenance of these, with an ongoing acceptable level of technical integrity over the entire service life; 
• setting up adequate lines of defence such as alarm management, work preparation and ensuring a safe work zone, permit-to-work documents, inspections/approvals, etc.

Safety culture (LT)

Early in 2024, the results of the baseline measurement for the Safety Culture Ladder were presented to the Executive Board and the managers. The conclusion is that Gasunie is on rung 3 (of 5) of the ladder and that we anticipate a possible downward trend. Future safety performance is at risk because we currently rely on and benefit from strategic, policy and technical decisions made in the past and on personal expertise and experience that will disappear in the future due to natural churn of employees.

The study shows that the company is still in the process of adapting to a number of major changes that have occurred over the past four years. This concerns a combination of internal organisational changes and the company’s new role in the energy transition. As a result, employees have begun to feel uncertain about the relative importance of time, efficiency and safety at work. Now that more projects are entering the implementation phase, this can result in an increase in accidents, incidents and serious dangerous situations. From the study it has emerged that we need to take further steps to turn policy into action in terms of individual responsibility, and we need to work on an open culture focused on continuous learning and improvement.

A core team consisting of a member of the Executive Board and the managers of Operations, Participating Interests, HR and Safety is responsible for achieving our safety culture objectives. In short, these are: 

• Define a strong safety message that sets a clear standard and which is reflected in the personal actions of everyone at Gasunie.
• See that safety is visibly our highest priority and that everyone understands this. Decisions at all levels and in all functions are aimed at improving safety, now and in the future.
• Realise a proactive safety culture where employees take responsibility for their own actions, speak up when it comes to the behaviour of others, continuously improve our systems, and prevent incidents. 
• Ensure strong safety leadership, where all managers at Gasunie make decisions based on shared safety values and actively talk to their staff and contractors about maintaining a robust safety culture and strong safety performance. 
• See that field staff, head office staff and contractor employees all actively work together on safety throughout the value chain, from business development and construction to management and maintenance.

Safe@Gasunie (LT)

We organise our annual Safe@Gasunie Safety Day for all Gasunie employees. The theme of the Safety Days held in 2024 was ‘Every link counts’. The aim was to increase awareness along the entire ‘chain’ of activities – from developing the concept to contracting, implementation and handover – that everyone’s actions contribute to safety. No matter where you work, what you do and what you do not do has an effect on the safety of others.

This message was underscored during workshops using a case well known within the industry: the explosion at the NAM facility in Warffum in 2005. The main lesson from this incident is that a total of 28 lines of defence that could have prevented the incident failed. Furthermore, around 80% of these lines of defence were not activities at the site, but rather preparations that took place in the office. For Gasunie, a fast-growing company in a transitional phase between gas transmission and transmission and transport of new substances, this message is extra important.

To promote the effectiveness of thinking about value chain responsibility, we also invited employees of our 20 main contractors to participate in our Safety Days. This mix of people from the various Gasunie departments and various contractors has a noticeable bolstering effect with regard to the effectiveness of the safety dialogue: this makes the other person further down the value chain visible and relatable.

To strengthen the connection with the operational part of our work, our main contractors, suppliers and our own departments presented their works and their innovations at a well-attended safety market during the Safety Days.

Process safety (LT)

As part of the Safety Culture Programme, we have also initiated a workflow to draw attention to and address process safety for the new developments in the energy transition. For the existing natural gas activities, we use the technical standards we have developed within the company. These are also being made usable for the new modalities of CO₂, hydrogen and heat. Where necessary, new standards are being developed and we are contributing to research aimed at bridging the gap between what we know and what is new to us. Specific action plans will follow as soon as the developments have been mapped.

External safety (LT)

As with process safety, together with partners we are contributing to research into the differences between the natural gas we know and the flows that are new to us. There are often parties who already have experience with these flows – for example in the area of hydrogen transmission – and who we can ask to share their knowledge. In the end, though, it is the government that, based on the results of research and case studies, sets the frameworks through laws and regulations. Once the government has set these frameworks, we will develop our action plans accordingly where necessary.

The reportable accidents involved eight Gasunie employees and fourteen third parties. Third parties are people who have become unintentionally involved in an undesirable event caused by a Gasunie asset or activity and who are either staff of contractors/subcontractors, visitors to a Gasunie location or project site, local residents, passers-by or road users. In 2024, the only third parties involved in reportable accidents were staff of contractors/subcontractors. In 2024, there were no work-related fatalities among Gasunie employees or those of external parties.

Our TRFI was up in 2024 compared to 2023 and so still exceeds the threshold value of 2.5, meaning the number of accidents occurring on the job is unacceptably high. In 2024, 6.4 million (2023: 6.6 million) hours of work were clocked at Gasunie. The combination of 22 reportable accidents and 6.4 million hours worked results in a TRFI of 3.4. The continued high level of reportable accidents is an additional incentive for us to take further action.

In the Appendix to the Sustainability Statement we have included a ratio for our own workforce only (employees and non-employees in our own workforce), as prescribed in the ESRS.