The Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the Ministry of Labor and the General Office of Formosa Plastic Group jointly held the "2021 International Process Safety Conference" in the International Conference Hall of the Administration Building of Formosa Plastics Group Mailiao Industrial Complex on December 17th. The foreign experts Mr. Qingsheng Wang, Professor and Director of the Safety Engineering Research Program at the Texas A&M University, Mr. Daniel Kats, Manager of the Plant of Formosa Plastic Group in Texas, Mr. Yuefeng Chen, Vice President of MARSH based in the United States, and the national scholar Professor Ming-Hsiao Tsai were arranged to discuss and share their practical experiences in process safety management promotion, AI technology application, disaster cases and their cause investigations, risk classification and rating, process operation hazard analysis, and intelligent monitoring of pipeline equipment corrosions. More than 150 representatives of dozens of companies of the same domestic petrochemical industry including CPC Corporation Taiwan, Chang Chun Group, USI Group, Chi Mei Corp., China Petrochemical Development Corporation, LCY Group, Formosan Union Chemical Corp., Grand Pacific Petrochemical Corporation, Ho Tung Chemical Corp., Oriental Union Chemical Corp., UCP Technology Corp., and Dow Chemical Taiwan Ltd., and the labor inspection agencies were invited to participate in the Conference. Through the interactions and experience sharing of international process safety management technology, the process safety of the domestic petrochemical industry was further strengthened and complied with international standards.

Mr. Tzu-Lien Tzou, the Chief of Occupational Safety and Health Administration, indicated in his speech that the gross product of the domestic petrochemical-related industries accounts for 28.2% of that of the national manufacturing industry. It plays a pivotal role and making a major contribution to the national economic development. Further, the Mailiao Industrial Park is a critical petrochemical stronghold in Taiwan, and a vertically integrated and large-scale multiplex facility encompassing 56 factories in the upper, middle, and lower streams of the oil refining and petrochemical industries. The manufacturing processes of such industries are usually performed at high temperature and high pressure and require the storage of large quantities of flammable chemical substances prone to major risks of catastrophes such as fire and explosion. A minor oversight in the operation may cause severe personnel or property losses, resulting in the enterprises harmed and the immense costs incurred to the entire society. It was also highlighted that hygiene and safety together serve as the foundation for the sustainable operation of industries and necessitate long-term investment by corporations. Particularly, the major petrochemical companies such as Formosa Plastic Group and CPC Corporation Taiwan shall undertake the leading role in the petrochemical occupational safety culture establishment to invest additional resources to boost the hygiene and safety management standards to fully fulfill the social responsibilities of the enterprises. It was also anticipated that the discussions and sharing in the forum of this Conference would provide the reference for the relevant domestic petrochemical ventures to promote manufacturing process safety management.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration earnestly appealed that the manufacturing process safety management requires the structured and systematic identification and analysis of the potential hazards in the manufacturing process workplaces and the implementation of safety management and necessary preventive facilities to prevent the disasters such as fire, explosion, and toxic substance discharge. This was extremely important to the petrochemical industry, calling for the industry, government, and academia to collaborate and work together for the implementation. The enterprise owners should implement the manufacturing process safety management more proactively in order to reduce the potential hazards and risks in the petrochemical manufacturing processes and fortify the management and control measures for disaster prevention.