Revisiting the Financial Impact of Major Accidents in Chemical Plants, the Need to Develop New Metrics on Financial Losses and Communication Strategies Towards Shareholders or Financial Decision Makers

The traditional risk assessment in chemical processes focuses on reviewing thedamages or effects to workers, the population, facilities or the environment from chemical risks. Nowadays, many chemical process companies are listed on the stock exchange to get money for funding their investment projects, such as expansion, modernization of existing facilities, among others investment projects.

There are situations in which shareholders or financial decision makers do not fully understand the financial implications of a major accident in a chemical process or for these shareholders, the use of financial risk analysis tools can be complex or difficult to understand or interpret its results.

From our experience, shareholders and financial decision makers are usually familiar with the use of financial ratios generated from the accounting that result easier to understand and visualize financial implications of a major chemical accident in the daily operations of the company or in the level of performance on credibility of this company in the stock market. This paper suggests to revisit and to develop new financial metrics together with effective communication strategies for shareholders and decision makers related to the financial implications of major chemical accidents.