While growing up in Anacortes, Wash., Roxan Kraft was aware of the Shell refinery in her hometown but it would be later in life before she had any association with it. Her mother’s family made a living as farmers and her father’s side of the family fished the nearby Fidalgo Bay. As a first generation college student, Kraft originally planned to be a doctor or veterinarian but after some encouragement from her math professor at Western Washington University, she decided to become an engineer. That decision has allowed Kraft to travel abroad and network with some of the largest manufacturing companies in the world. Kraft will soon celebrate her one-year anniversary as general manager of the Shell Chemical Geismar Plant in Louisiana, a job she describes as “a dream come true.”
“As general manager of the site, my span of control is basically everything that goes on inside the site and then the interface with the larger Shell corporation, in particular the chemical business,” Kraft said. “Along with that, a lot of the general manager duties are connecting with the community and networking amongst the industry. On July 1 of last year, I became the general manager at Geismar and this is like a dream come true for me. It’s a fabulous job with great people.”
Before securing her “dream job,” Kraft held a number of related positions that pre-pared her for her current role.
“So, my first job was working at the ARCO refinery in Ferndale, Wash., where I was a laboratory technician,” she said. “It was a summer job where I traveled all over doing quality assurance at service stations and terminals. Then I ended up applying to graduate school in chemical engineering. A couple of years later I graduated from the University of California Santa Barbara and started working at the Texaco refinery in Anacortes, which then became the Shell refinery.”
At the Texaco refinery, Kraft started out as a process engineer and had responsibility for multiple units in the site. She then moved into business planning, which involves creating mathematical models of the refinery and determining the optimal crude slate to run to make the products the company wants. She eventually moved to Houston to take on the role of assistant to the vice president of the Americas for Shell Oil Co. Afterward she went back into the refineries and worked as a business planning manager and process engineering manager. In 2004, she moved to the Convent Refinery just down the river from her current site and was the production unit manager and then the production manager until 2009.
“That was my first foray into the unit operations portion,” Kraft said. “From there, I moved back to Houston as a general man-ager of integration where I worked on several global projects. I traveled internationally, which was a great experience that allowed me to network on a global basis and see how manufacturing businesses work across the globe. During that time I got very involved in using lean and continuous improvement to deliver results on a global basis.”
In addition to her experience and knowledge, Kraft said her journey to general manager also required her to have a deep passion for the industry.
“You have to have a passion for the business and even more than that you’ve got to have a passion for the people,” she said. “For me, it is all about taking what is a great site and making it even better and the only way to do that is through the people and through developing leaders, developing the work force. Then you have to have a broad enough background and experiences to understand how the business works and how to optimize the business.”
LNG expansion on the horizon
Shell recently finalized an agreement with TravelCenters of America LLC (TA) to develop a U.S. nationwide network of LNG fueling centers for heavy-duty road transport customers. Kraft’s site was one of the locations chosen for an LNG production unit.
“We will be building a unit here with a pipeline that goes to a new dock,” she said. “We will be delivering LNG via truck and barge for use in heavy haul trucking and vessels servicing drilling rigs in the Gulf Coast. The unit will produce about 400,000 gallons a day of LNG. We are very happy to have been chosen.”
Shell’s plan is to construct at least two LNG fueling lanes and a storage facility at up to 100 existing TA and Petro Shopping Centers branded full service travel centers along the U.S. interstate highway system. Pending customary approvals, Shell anticipates the first of these stations will be operational in roughly one year’s time with a priority to develop the main trucking corridors to provide the potential for the first-ever coast-to-coast LNG-fueled commercial transport network.
Overcoming challenges, embracing opportunities
With new opportunities and expansion comes new challenges but Kraft said those challenges are actually very exciting.
“We are in a time where the industry is growing,” she said. “And Geismar is growing but with that comes the ability to balance the culture you have at the site with growth. So, we are hiring, bringing in new people and we are trying to bring those folks in and assimilate them into our culture. One of the things I am most proud of at Geismar is the family atmosphere we have at the site. The bigger the family is the harder it is to make sure you have the same kind of feeling at the plant. So, it is creating the vision with folks, making sure we are all headed in the same direction and pulling on the rope in the same way.”
Kraft said one of the things everyone at the site really works hard to accomplish is a “goal zero” mindset, which is no harm to people and no leaks in the site.
“We want to be an extremely safe site to work at and that starts with our family and how we create an atmosphere of everybody caring about their neighbor — whether they are Shell employees or contractors,” she said. “So, I think one of the greatest challenges for us is keeping our chronic unease around safety and goal zero while assimilating new folks into the plant. It is a challenge, but it is a fun one. It is an exciting one.”
In order to attain goal zero at the site, Kraft said Shell implements a number of safety training programs and incentives.
“Something we have that I think is a bit unique is our behavioral-based safety pro-gram, BRAVO (behaviors, responsibilities and visual observations),” she said. “It is a volunteer-based program that is actually run by our technicians at the site. They have a steering team and they teach a class on how to observe for safe and at-risk behaviors. We spend a lot of time out in the field with our staff, as well as our contractors, observing work and making sure people are using safe behaviors and the right tools. When we spot something that is at risk, we just engage in a conversation around that. It really has become part of the fabric of Geismar and something I think sets us apart.”
Including both Shell employees and outside contractors, the site has completed more than 6 million work hours without a lost-time injury and Shell employees have reached a milestone of two years without an OSHA recordable injury. In addition, the plant was one of three sites globally to win the personal and process safety awards for 2012 from Shell Manufacturing’s executive vice president. While the site’s accomplishments are impressive, Kraft said she will always strive for continuous improvement.
“We have a very strong safety record but it is still not perfectly goal zero and that is our objective,” Kraft said. “We get a lot of comments from our contractors about how Shell lives that goal zero mindset. A lot of people talk about it but we really try to put it in action. We like to call it personal touch interactions around safety. I want us to be seen by our customers as a very reliable source of product and I want to see us grow so we can provide jobs for the families in the area for years and years to come.”
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Shell Chemical Geismar Plant
7594 Hwy. 75P.O. Box 500
Geismar, LA 70734
(225) 201-6222
Employees: 600 Shell employees and approximately 400-500 contractors
Products: Ethylene oxide, ethylene glycol, detergent range alcohols, ethoxylates and higher olefins
Size: 800 acres (nearly 400 developed)
