Minimize Environmental Impact
Remediation
We take seriously our duty to restore properties impacted by our operations. Our responsibility for remediation can arise from prior contamination on properties we subsequently acquired, contamination of properties we currently own or contamination of previously owned properties for which we have assumed individual or joint responsibility for cleanup. We currently are restoring more than 3,000 properties in various locations around the world and have accrued about $1 billion for the resulting environmental liabilities. Following are some examples of our approach to remediation. In Russia, where we have a joint venture with LUKOIL to develop oil and gas resources in the northern part of the Timan-Pechora province, we are involved in ongoing remediation of well sites that were among the assets included in company acquisitions. The work involves removal of old, abandoned equipment and structures, remediation of contaminated soil and reseeding where natural regrowth does not occur in order to assist the tundra’s return to its natural state. At the Whitegate refinery in Ireland, we have completed remediation of two landfill sites within the grounds that existed when we acquired the facility in 2001. In 2005, we removed 9,000 metric tons of oil-contaminated soil from one site and shipped it to a specialist contractor in Germany for treatment. In 2006, a second site containing building rubble and other inert waste was capped with a waterproof membrane and covered with topsoil. Both sites now have been landscaped. Whitegate’s waste is no longer managed on site. Material that cannot be reused or recycled is sent to licensed facilities for treatment or disposal in accordance with Irish and European Union legislation. In 2005, we received an Earth Day Award from the Utah Board of Oil, Gas and Mining for our restoration of a former drill site in Reese Canyon at the Grand Staircase National Monument in Escalante, Utah. We drilled an exploratory well at the site in 1997 before the area became a national monument. Since the well was a dry hole, work began in the late 1990s to restore and replant the drill site. After the first plantings were unsuccessful due to drought, the area was successfully replanted in 2004.