The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and CREON Group have announced results of the fifth Environmental Transparency Rating of Oil & Gas Companies operating in Russia. The announcement ceremony took place at the Analytical Center of the Government of the Russian Federation in Moscow on the 30th of November.
The Rating project has been implemented with support from the United Nations Environment Program and with participation of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Russia and the Ministry of Energy of Russia. Just as in previous years, the rating process has been executed by National Rating Agency, while the Luxembourg-based fund management company Creon Capital participated as a partner in the project.
The results of the rating in 2018 both affirmed yesteryear leaders’ standings and revealed new prominent up-and-coming participants. As in the previous year Sakhalin Energy (Sakhalin-2), a joint venture of Gazprom, Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi, ranked first, followed by Zarubezhneft. The latter company appears in the top 3 for the first time. Exxon NL achieved the third rank.
The high significance of the study was emphasized by the Acting Minister of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation Denis Khramov : “Public initiatives of the World Wildlife Fund, such as the environmental rating of oil and gas companies, make an important contribution to the improvement of environmental policy in the industry, as well as increase the level of accessibility of environmentally significant information for population of the country “.
“Recently, we have seen more and more support and attention to our rating from such specialized agencies as the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Energy of Russia, which shows the demand for ratings in the system of state management of environmental risks and impacts,” noted Alexey Knizhnikov , Head of the Environmental Policy Program of the WWF Fuel and Energy Complex Russia, – it is important to note that out of four state oil and gas companies – two, NK Rosneft and Zarubezhneft are more and more actively involved in the work on the rating every year, in particular, they always take part in meetings to develop the methodology and when summarizing results “.
The words of support to the organizers of the rating were voiced by the Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation Pavel Sorokin : “Increasing the social and environmental responsibility of oil and gas enterprises of the country is becoming an increasingly priority task in the field of public administration and increasing the competitiveness of our business. The public initiative for the rating /… / has shown its effectiveness over the five-year period of the project. We should continue to actively develop a dialogue between oil and gas companies and society on environmental safety issues at the sites of this project ”.
The head of Creon Capital Fares Kilzie, in turn, stressed: “CREON Group and, in particular, the Creon Capital fund supports and promotes the idea of“ responsible investments ”, contributing to the development of a favorable investment climate in Russia. We see great prospects in the greening of the domestic oil and gas sector and in attracting financing for projects with an environmental component, such as the deep processing of APG and the use of LNG as an alternative to traditional fuels. In this regard, I would like to especially note the successes of the largest LNG producer in Russia, NOVATEK, which is implementing such initiatives on a large scale in our country. “
The rating has been conducted annually since 2014 in order to obtain objective and comparable information on the level of environmental impact of the participants in the domestic oil and gas sector. The public nature of the rating helps to improve the quality of environmental risk management and reduce impacts in the oil and gas industry.
The rating consists of three sections: environmental management, environmental impact and information disclosure. In 2018, a number of changes and additions were made to the rating methodology. In particular, a provision was added on the possibility of applying penalties in the event of a confirmed human rights violation by the company. It also included a criterion for assessing the presence and effectiveness of the Company’s Oil Recovery Factor (ORF) Improvement Program and added parameters for assessing the level of involvement of the public concerned in the conduct and analysis of the company’s oil spill response (OSR) drills, as well as the availability of the results of industrial environmental monitoring and monitoring.
This year, for the first time in the history of the rating, individual company profiles with the calculation results for all criteria were published on the WWF-Russia website. Thus, the rating itself becomes more transparent.
