At Tullow, Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) is a core value. As part of our culture we support the communities where we work and protect people and the environment.
A clear link
Good CSR helps us develop a political and community profile that supports our business and strategic objectives. Our focus is on delivering the most appropriate CSR activities to ensure we achieve the best outcome. Our CSR and Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) policies, which are reviewed annually by the Board and signed off by Aidan Heavey, Tullow’s Chief Executive, describe our core values and formalise our long standing commitment to these areas.
CSR in Tullow is embedded in our business processes and aligned to our ‘Working with Communities’ initiative, which encompasses all our community based activities.
Tullow’s CSR Committee manages our growing support for community sponsorship programmes and provides guidance to those responsible for CSR.
We prioritise our support for carefully selected projects, which can be as basic as the provision of clean water through to programmes aimed at socio-economic change. Where we have long-term operations we have a greater opportunity to engage in longer-term CSR activities such as assisting schools and building birthing centres. However, in the early exploration phase we typically focus on short-term, stand-alone projects such as the distribution of mosquito nets.
We operate in numerous countries where core EHS standards are either not yet in place or not enforced. It is under these circumstances that we must meet the challenge of developing programmes which provide social and community support, but which also drive improvements in EHS awareness and help to create a culture which minimises risk to people.
Key EHS metrics
| 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Groupwide | ||||
| Lost Time Incident (LTI) | 10 | 5 | 3 |
|
| Lost Time Incident Frequency Rate (LTIFR) | 1.95 | 0.81 | 0.82 |
|
| High Potential Incident (HIPO) | 29 | 3 | 2 |
|
| Total Recordable Incidents (TRI) | 65 | 74 | 11 |
|
| Total Recordable Incident Frequency Rate (TRIFR) | 12.7 | 12.1 | 3 |
|
| Hours worked (millions) | 5.1 | 6.1 | 3.7 | |
| Oil and chemical spills | 1 | 2 | 2 |
|
| UK only | ||||
| EUETS C02 emissions (tonnes) | 190,508 | 215,407 | 258,407 |
|
| UK Produced water quantity (m3) | 6,920.1 | 9,725.4 | 7,871.9 |
|
| UK Total oil in produced water (tonnes) | 0.2125 | 0.1624 | – |
|
| Water usage (m3) | 31,899 | 18,678 | 29,200 |
|
| 2007 new Group figures | ||||
| Production water usage (m3) | 39,496 | |||
| Full production emissions (tonnes CO2) | 204,961 | |||
| All drilling emissions (tonnes CO2) | 23,597 | |||
| All well test emissions (tonnes CO2) | 11,667 |
Growing support
In 2007, we were involved in 120 projects across 19 countries and our discretionary spend was US$0.9 million (£0.5 million) on social and community development projects, compared to US$0.5 million (£0.3 million) in 2006.
Some of the many new projects we were involved in included drilling water wells in Uganda and Ghana, donating funds to emergency relief efforts for children in Sudan and flood relief in Bangladesh and the construction of a shelter home for abused children in Cape Town. We also retained our commitment to numerous long-term projects including ECOFAC gorilla conservation in Central Africa, Noluthandu School for the Deaf in Cape Town, assistance to local schools in Bangladesh and support for the communities local to our UK operations.
To assist in fully utilising our 2008 discretionary budget of US$2 million (£1 million) for social and community development, we have made a number of key changes:
- We refined our internal communication to ensure regular monitoring and management of the budget spend;
- We improved communication and clarity around the allocation of funding with a formal arrangement to assess and approve projects; and
- We recruited a CSR Advisor to facilitate the approvals process, report monthly to the CSR committee and assist budget holders with their project selection and analysis.
A challenging year for health and safety
It was a challenging year for health and safety at some of our operations and this impacted on overall results for key health and safety performance indicators. We are disappointed by the increase in LTIs across our operations with 10 LTIs in 2007, raising our LTIFR to 1.95 per million hours worked. There was also a significant increase in the number of HIPOs reported which cannot be wholly explained by a revision of accident and incident reporting. Paying specific attention to HIPOs is a way of identifying key learnings and creates the opportunity to implement improvements before an actual incident occurs.
In 2007, we had two examples of excellent health and safety performance within the Group. Our Bangora facility in Bangladesh completed its first year of production with zero LTIs and Lüderitz, our temporary logistics base in Namibia, operated through the full well programme for over 200 days without an LTI.
Overall the 2007 outcome is in contrast to the steady improvement in safety performance we have had in recent years and is unacceptable. We have already taken significant steps to meet the challenge of improving our results and through positive leadership from Senior Management plan to return to top quartile industry performance in 2008.
Back to topA strong environmental performance
Our environmental performance over the year has been good with no significant incidents and only a single spill of 10 barrels in Uganda. We also saw a 12% reduction in CO2 emissions covered by the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EUETS) reinforcing the benefits of the Bacton plant rationalisation programme for which we received the Business in the Community ‘Big Tick’ award in 2007.
Over the course of 2007 the environmental performance of our operated activities complied with an increasingly diverse range of regulatory regimes, and we continued to set our own appropriate standards and controls where local legislation is less developed. Key to setting these standards is the preparation of Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIA) and linking these to management programmes that address the environmental risk of our planned activities. Our focus on ESIAs has been extensive and in Uganda, for example, we have carried out numerous assessments across the Kaiso-Tonya valley including reworking existing assessments where we felt key environmental issues had not been fully addressed.
Back to topBetter reporting
Previously, reported data has been mainly for UK operated assets and while these are still the most significant contributors we recognised the need to reflect our widening operational base and to expand the reach of our environmental metrics. A mid-year review of environmental data was undertaken in 2007, to set appropriate corporate reporting requirements. Group production, drilling and well test data have been collated for the first time, offering a greater understanding of our contribution to emissions of greenhouse gases. This is the first step in benchmarking our performance.
Throughout 2008 we will continue to expand the scope of our data collation to develop an even more comprehensive view of the Group’s environmental performance.
Back to topExternal assurance
Over the last two years we have steadily improved the overall level, quality and detail of the data we report in our CSR Report. One common issue in feedback from stakeholders is external assurance of the CSR Report, to provide greater confidence in the data being reported and verification of the robustness of Tullow’s internal data collation and calculation processes.
In response we have commenced a three-year programme with Deloitte & Touche LLP to give assurance on Tullow’s EHS data at Group level for 2007.
The 2007 data in the EHS key metrics table are taken from the data set that will be assured in the 2007 CSR Report, which will be published in May this year.
Furthermore, we plan to widen assurance coverage over the next two years.
Back to topOutlook for 2008
Our focus for the immediate future is on restoring a strong health and safety performance, building fully representative environmental data and increasing our social and community spending to targeted levels. Our goals for 2008 are challenging and we look forward to achieving them.
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