Results of the First Environmental Responsibility Rating of Oil and Gas companies in Republic of Kazakhstan were presented on winner’s award ceremony in Astana. On February 22, CREON Energy and WWF Russia with the participation of the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan and in partnership with the United Nations Environment Program in Central Asia (UNEP-CA), CREON Capital and the National Rating Agency presented the results of the first Environmental Responsibility Rating of Oil and Gas companies in Republic of Kazakhstan. This event provided an opportunity to showcase reports on the results of the First Environmental Responsibility Rating of Oil and Gas Companies in Republic of Kazakhstan (methodology, calculations, results) and the results of the Oil & Gas Industry Environmental Responsibility Rating for 2017 and to award the winners.
“We can see that regular work on determining the availability of information in the Oil and Gas sector positively affects the environmental responsibility of subsoil users. In our country, companies were rated for the first time and we hope that this will become a traditional assessment of company’s disclosure and will enhance the effect of the measures taken by oil and gas companies to improve the environmental conditions in our country, ” said Gani Sadibekov, Vice Minister of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan at the presentation of the First Environmental Responsibility Rating of Oil and Gas Companies in Republic of Kazakhstan.
The rating is based on the publicly available data regarding the participants’ activities in Kazakhstan. This principle is a logical continuation of the thesis of socially responsible business. The rating showed that domestic oil and gas companies demonstrate a fairly high level of transparency related to environmental responsibility.
“Four years ago, CREON Group together with WWF offered an absolutely new initiative – to assess oil and gas companies not only in terms of profit or production volume, but also based on the level of environmental impact. We gladly transfer our experience on to the international level,” said Sandjar Turgunov, General Manager of CREON Group.
Pilot project of the environmental rating of oil and gas companies in Kazakhstan was based on objective and comparable information on the level of environmental responsibility with 16 participating companies and focusing on the scale of their environmental impact level. The companies actively cooperated on data disclosure and the project became a significant incentive for increasing the transparency of enterprises.
“Transition to a “green economy” is impossible without the efforts of all the parties: the state, the private sector, and the general public. It is satisfying to realize that in Kazakhstan we can demonstrate such a consolidation of actors and understanding of the importance of achieving the environmental goals, including the context of the global sustainable development goals adopted in 2015,” said Natalia Alekseeva, head of the UNEP office for Central Asia.
16 companies were included in the first rating – leaders by the volume of oil and natural gas production. The enterprises were compared by the following criteria: environmental management, environmental impact and disclosure / transparency.
Based on the results of the assessment, the rating of 2017 was headed by JSC NC KazMunaiGaz, followed by Karachaganak Petroleum Operating BV, and PetroKazakhstan Kumkol Resources (extracting branch of PetroKazakhstan Inc.) on the third place.
“It is the voluntary mechanisms of environmental responsibility that stimulate social and environmental innovations, disclosure of activities and create market competitive advantages for business – both in the consumer preferences and in the risk assessments of financial institutions,” said Evgeny Shvarts, Director for Conservation Policy of the World Wide Fund (WWF) of Russia.
Environmental Responsibility Rating of Oil and Gas Companies in Republic of Kazakhstan plays an important role and will contribute to improving the quality of environmental risk management in the extraction, transportation and processing of hydrocarbon raw materials, as well as reducing negative environmental impact. The rating is based on the original methodology developed by WWF and tested in Russia in 2014 – 2017.
