Stakeholder questions
In each of the four main sections of this report we have included a stakeholder question together with our answer.
If you would like to provide us with a question for our 2008 Report, please contact us via the website above, or email cr@bg-group.com
“How does BG Group assure itself that all of its employees are acting with integrity, fairness and transparency?”
Phillipa Foster Back,
Director, Institute of Business Ethics
BG Group has put a wide range of processes and activities in place to meet the admittedly difficult challenge of ensuring our employees are able to follow our Business Principle to act with integrity, fairness and transparency. These efforts include:
- the Governance Self Assessment (GSA) mechanism – the formal assurance process over the Business Principles detailed within the Conduct section – which provides assurance on whether business is conducted in accordance with the Business Principles. This process reviews whether asset/ function leadership demonstrates the behaviours described in the Business Principles, and whether behaviour not in accordance with the Business Principles has been identified and remedial action prescribed;
- Business Principles training and equality and diversity briefings;
- Group-wide recruitment Guidelines which encourage open advertising of employee vacancies on the Group’s intranet;
- consistency reviews carried out during the Annual Performance Review process; and
- the assessment of incidents reported through the Whistleblowing mechanism to ascertain whether there has been an actual or potential breach of our Business Principles.
“How has the Group Executive Committee (GEC) identified priorities, set meaningful targets (for safety, health and well-being) and tracked progress, including by personal participation in monitoring and audit processes?”
Roger Bibbings,
Occupational Safety Advisor, RoSPA (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents)
The GEC has direct accountability for Health, Safety, Security and Environment (HSSE) performance.
The GEC is informed on HSSE issues by the HSSE Committee (chaired by the Chief Executive), a sub-committee of the GEC. This sub-committee receives regular reports on the Company’s HSSE performance, significant changes in risk profile and priority findings from Group HSSE audits. This information allows the Committee to identify priorities. Actions taken on the basis of this Committee’s recommendations include:
- mandatory Group-wide defensive driving training;
- enhanced health management resources;
- the establishment of an Occupational Health and Wellbeing centre of excellence at Group headquarters;
- revision of the HSSE policy to align work with the Group’s Business Principles; and
- priority given to the investigation of, and learning from, high potential incidents.
Priorities identified are used to create an annual HSSE balanced scorecard, including both leading and lagging performance indicators. Targets are agreed with the aim of continuous and sustainable improvement. Performance against the scorecard is reviewed regularly: occupational illness and injury frequency rates are reported monthly; BBS observations and analysis and completion of health improvement actions are reported quarterly. This is supported by written commentary.
BG Board and Executive members undertook a number of visits to our assets and joint ventures during 2007. Awards for good health and safety performance and for innovation are given as part of the Chairman’s Awards.
“It is estimated that over two billion people have no access to modern energy services. As a major producer of energy and power, what contribution do you believe that BG Group can make to increasing access within the communities in which it operates?”
Adrian Hodges, Managing Director,
International Business Leaders Forum
Access to energy resources and modern energy sources is a key requirement for both development and economic growth. Without this, emerging nations have difficulty building industries, establishing core infrastructure and connecting goods and services to markets. Communities also need reliable energy sources for basic services such as heating, lighting and cooking.
The provision of energy services must be sustainable. Supplies need to be reliable, predictable, affordable, straightforward to maintain and available for the long term. With present technology, under most circumstances providing energy from centralised services – national and regional gas and electricity grids – is the most cost-efficient means of meeting communities’ needs.
In 2007, BG Group subsidiaries connected more than 150 000 new households to gas networks in Brazil, India and Argentina. These connections provide direct access to modern energy supplies as part of our core business – they are an extension of our existing facilities and represent households who did not previously have access to gas networks.
The Group also connected a number of commercial and industrial facilities to gas for the first time, making more than 200 000 new connections in total.
Additionally, in a number of our assets (such as Kazakhstan), we provide electricity for local communities from the power plants within our facilities.
“Does the absence of published greenhouse gas emissions targets or a formal commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions undermine the credibility of BG Group’s claims to making a positive contribution to the protection of the environment?”
Rory Sullivan,
Head of Investor Responsibility,
Insight Investment
Our core product, natural gas, has proven benefits in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and improving air quality where it is used in place of other fossil fuels. We also provide access to technologies such as co-generation that improve efficiency and thereby bring environmental benefits. Our business extends these benefits to emerging economies, many of which have depended historically on coal or oil supplies. We also provide greater supply certainty for established economies which have been partly or wholly dependent upon gas for many years.
In addition to these direct benefits from our core product, we also develop and introduce improved environmental management practices, such as ISO 14001, which have the effect of reducing the environmental impact of our operations. In some countries BG Group has been the first hydrocarbon company to introduce these systems.
As well as providing benefits through our core business, we also recognise that we need to manage the rate of growth of our own emissions as our business grows. We have therefore introduced a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target.
We will continue to take positive actions to reduce emissions: our target states that by 2012 the outcome of those actions will have resulted in a sustainable total emission reduction of one million tonnes. Further details of this target may be found above.