As part of the 2006 CR reporting process, we asked a variety of organisations to ask us a question on any aspect of our business. We then took a representative selection of these and included them in the 2006 report, together with our answers.
The four questions we placed in our report are reproduced below. We obviously received additional questions which we couldn't fit into our report. We are in the process of producing answers to those questions as well, and they will in time be included on this page.
“How is BG Group assessing that employees across its operations understand and are committed to BG Group’s anti-bribery policy and have the requisite skills to counter bribery?”
Peter Wilkinson,
Transparency International
BG Group’s Business Principles state, “We do not tolerate corruption in any form, whether direct or indirect”. We have carried out a number of measures to assist our employees with this Principle and to counter bribery.
To ensure understanding, we have provided additional guidance within our Principles into Practice and Corporate Commitments documents, which are available to all staff. We have also provided additional training for staff in high risk countries, and produced an online anti-corruption tool for our Nigeria asset, which can be accessed across the Group.
In 2006 we launched a Group-wide Anti-Corruption standard. This provides further guidance and clarity (for example, a firm prohibition on the payment or acceptance of bribes or facilitation payments, except where this would endanger safety), and also contains six ‘Golden Rules’; practical guidance intended to help employees to counter bribery – see our anticorruption Business Principle for these rules.
Feedback from training and whistleblowing cases help us to assess how well employees understand and are committed to BG Group’s Anti-Corruption standard.
Our whistleblowing line provides one of the channels for employees to report actual or potential infringements of the Business Principles. The total number of whistleblowing and fraud cases during 2006 was 31 (24 whistleblowing, 7 fraud), compared to 13 in 2005 (7 whistleblowing, 6 fraud), indicating an increased level of awareness. We found evidence of fraud in six cases and four employees were dismissed.
“How is BG Group ensuring excellence in process safety in the wake of the Baker Report, and what leading and lagging indicators is the Group using to monitor internally and communicate externally?”
Nick Robins,
Head of SRI Funds, Henderson Global Investors
BG Group views the management of asset integrity (process safety) as a fundamental requirement. Our AIBA programme benchmarks asset integrity, and is one of a number of activities that aim to improve asset integrity at BG Group; others include minimum engineering and operations standards, leading integrity indicators reporting and improved audit processes and competency systems.
We have reviewed the Baker Report and have recently set up a working group to assess how its findings may apply within BG Group . In February 2007, in the light of the Baker Report, we carried out an exercise to assess existing integrity improvement plans to establish:
potential amendments or alterations;
new activities to be initiated;
how to best ensure the intent behind the Baker Report findings is achieved; and
how these activities will be communicated and monitored.
BG Group reports both leading and lagging asset integrity indicators (backlogs in maintenance, alarm rates, number of unclosed modifications etc) internally as part of our ongoing monitoring of asset integrity. This is done to identify worsening risks and areas for improvement. The data is reviewed at asset level, submitted for analysis and collation at Group level, and reported to BG Group’s HSSE Committee.
We do not externally report leading or lagging indicators, except for those published within this report.
The improvement of asset integrity management is an ongoing program. Raising awareness of integrity risks is essential to ensuring that asset integrity systems and processes are being consistently applied and improved across the Group.
“How much energy is consumed in the LNG process? How does the energy intensity compare with that required to send gas through pipelines?”
Mike Tyrrell,
Sustainability Analyst, Citigroup
Energy consumption across the LNG chain is influenced by a large number of factors including the quality of the source gas, technological choices, the climate along the chain, and the transport and distances to market. The highest energy consumption requirements in the LNG chain, other than the end use of the gas, are found in the liquefaction and shipping stages, which can typically use somewhere between 10% and 20% of the total energy delivered by the chain. Regasifying LNG uses comparatively little energy, particularly in circumstances where ambient air or sea temperature is used as the energy source for the regasification process.
The energy intensity of transporting gas through a pipeline is also dependent on a number of factors, not least the length of the pipeline. At short pipeline lengths the energy demand is typically lower than that of LNG processing and transportation. However, as the pipeline gets longer the closer the energy intensity gets to that of a LNG chain, due to factors such as booster compression. Our first order analysis indicates that the cross-over point, where the pipeline chain becomes more energy intensive than the LNG chain, lies at a transport distance of between 3 000 kilometres and 4 000 kilometres.
“How is BG Group assessing the potential social and human impacts of its global operations, including the impact of security arrangements, on surrounding communities around the world?”
Robert Davies,
CEO, International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF)
BG Group has an assessment process to understand how we interact with local communities for all of our operations, with a view to avoiding negative impacts and enhancing economic and social development opportunities. We do this prior to making investment decisions in new countries and as part of formal environmental and social impact assessments for new projects. In addition, we regularly review assessments of our ongoing operations to reflect changes in our activities and also in the socio-economic context of the areas in which we operate. We use BG Group’s Community Relations Toolbox, and we are currently providing training to relevant staff in all countries in which we operate to implement this guidance to best effect.
We seek to apply the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights within our areas of influence. Potential impacts of security arrangements are included in the assessment processes and relevant guidance is contained in the Community Relations Toolbox. To date, however, BG Group has not conducted a stand-alone human rights impact assessment, but will do so when appropriate. As with other aspects of the community, best practice in this area is constantly evolving and we seek to use new and effective approaches. As such, we participate in a number of industry and multi-sector initiatives aimed at deepening the understanding of security and human rights, and finding ways to address them.