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Protecting the environment

Being a large offshore oil and gas operator and a growing offshore wind power provider, preserving biodiversity and sensitive areas in the marine environment are of particular importance. In this respect, significant environmental aspects to manage include discharges of produced and processed water to sea, spills, drilling waste, use of areas and emissions of sound from our operations.

Additional important environmental aspects include NOx emissions from power and heat generation at many installations, plants and drilling rigs and SOx emissions from our refineries, drilling rigs and some of our offshore installations.

Our environmental management approach

We aim to diligently manage risks and impacts to the environment from our activities through:

  • Environmental risk and impact assessments in planning phases
  • Environmental baseline studies, surveys and monitoring programmes
  • Collaborative research projects to build knowledge
  • Take measures aiming at avoiding, minimizing, mitigating or offsetting negative effects

We regularly assess our performance through reviews and assurance activities and set actions to improve when needed. Our environmental work is guided by our commitments to prevent harm to the environment, to apply the precautionary principle and to comply with all applicable environmental laws and regulations.

Our actions

Biodiversity, oceans and sensitive areas

In response to the growing concerns related to loss of biodiversity, we are further developing our management approach to biodiversity.

What we do - a short glimpse:

Every year we map where we have operational assets and activities inside or near protected areas (PA) or areas of high biodiversity value (AHBV). For each facility and operational activity, we count every case where one or several PAs and AHBV are present in defined proximity zones (“Inside”, “< 1 km”, “1-5 km”, “5-20 km”). The outcome of this mapping and more information on what actions we take on biodiversity-related matters can be found in the Environment chapter of our Sustainability Report.

Working to minimise our negative impact

It is impossible to build and operate installations onshore and offshore without impacting the environment. But that is why we always have our environmental impact high on the agenda when developing and operating our assets.

Collaborations and partnerships

Logos of Seatrack, OREAC, UN Global Impact, IPIECA, UNEP, WCMC, IOGP