Shenhua Group has a proven successful approach to safety and, the World Coal Association (WCA) reports, “the safety performance in production is among the best in the world. Shenhua increased investment in safety, including production and management techniques. In the past three years, Shenhua’s investment on safety at coal mines grew by 35% annually. In 2012, the investment in coal mine safety was over RMB 5.412 billion ($872.9 million).
“With such efforts, the safety performance at Shenhua’s coal mines has been improving. In 2012, 45 coal mines at Shenhua realised a continuous running of 1,000 days without accident, 23 coal mines have 2,000 days, and six coal mines have a safe running of 3,000 days.”
Shenhua is the largest coal producer in China, producing 13% of total coal production in China in 2012 – 460 Mt. The group has 64 coal mines — these include mines with capacities over 10 Mt/y and mines with capacities of 0.6 Mt/y. There are mines with good safety conditions and mines with hazardous risks of gas, floods, and spontaneous combustion.
Shenhua operates mines with high coal-seam thickness over 7 m and mines with low seams of 0.9 m. Since the conditions vary significantly, it is difficult to control the risks. Shenhua took a number of steps to improve safety performance, including establishing a modern safety management philosophy and corporate culture, actively exploring and applying a Coalmine Risk Pre-control Management System, raising investment on safe production and technological innovation, and training employees to improve their competence.
Shenhua put forward its modern safety management philosophy to foster a balanced corporate culture on safety. In 2007, Shenhua launched the ‘Theory on Internal and External Factors to Cause an Accident’. Shenhua established and optimised a complete risk pre-control management system/safety management model. This model is based on identifying sources of danger and assessing risks.
The key in the system is to find the unsafe behavior and take measures to pre-control it.
Meanwhile, a system on intrinsically safe production was developed. With this system, any accident can be prevented and controlled, a new pathway to build a safe, modern, efficient coal mine is explored, a competent team is formed and the culture in safety is fostered at Shenhua.
Employees are trained to improve their safety competence in operating equipment. In 2012, the training on safety at Shenhua was 285,800 man‑hours. This level of training has meant that unsafe behaviour is avoided and people’s awareness of safety is improved.
WCA also reports “from 2005 to 2012, the accumulated coal production at Shenhua was 2.7 billion tonnes, while the fatality rate per million tonnes was 0.02, lower than the average of other major coal producing countries (the average in the US in 2011 was 0.04).
“In 2012, the fatality rate at the Shenhua Group was 0.0034, the best record in Shenhua’s history. Shenhua created a record of 0 fatalities when 370 Mt of coal were consecutively produced.”
Based on the Shenhua Group’s experience with the coal mine risk pre-control management system, the Management Standards on Coalmine’s Intrinsic Safety (Standards No. AQ/T1093-2011) was published and it became the first standard on safety management for the coal industry in China. Shenhua’s safety practice is promoted and applied, leading to better safety standards in the coal industry in China; the fatality rate nationwide per million tonnes of coal decreased from 2.69 in 2005 to 0.374 in 2012.