{"id":319,"date":"2008-05-01T12:50:41","date_gmt":"2008-05-01T12:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/?p=319"},"modified":"2008-05-01T12:50:41","modified_gmt":"2008-05-01T12:50:41","slug":"drilling-for-mud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.corporate-eye.com\/main\/drilling-for-mud\/","title":{"rendered":"Drilling For Mud"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine 30,000 Amazonian tribesmen carousing along the street, waving their spears and whooping at the top of their voices in celebration.<\/p>\n

They\u2019d taken the petrochemical company Chevron to court and won huge and unprecedented damages.<\/p>\n

For over twenty years Texaco, now a Chevron subsidiary, had dumped hazardous waste from its oil drilling enterprise into open lakes of effluent.<\/p>\n

Toxins seeped into the groundwater and poisoned over 1,500 square miles used to live and farm by local indians and settlers. Now they\u2019d got payback.
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\nThe court case is, in fact, still ongoing and even if they win its unlikely the entire population will travel to Chevron\u2019s headquarters to celebrate. It would, however, send shock waves through the industry.<\/p>\n

Dirty … but someone\u2019s got to do it<\/strong>
\nOil extraction relies upon cocktails of chemicals known as drilling muds. These are pumped continuously to the drill bit and back to keep it cool, lubricated and cleansed of drill cuttings.<\/p>\n

Whenever local laws allowed, many oil companies used simply to dump these drill muds when finished with, rather than putting them through an expensive decontamination process.<\/p>\n

While this is not necessarily the case anymore, the fact remains that oil drilling uses an extremely hazardous by-product to achieve results. How is this reported in the CSR sections of company websites?<\/p>\n

Dirty … but someone\u2019s got to report it<\/strong>
\nThere are five Oil & Gas businesses in the FTSE 100: BP, Royal Dutch Shell, BG Group, Tullow Oil and Cairn Energy.<\/p>\n

Three of these do not report drilling muds as a hazardous by-product of their operations. Cairn Energy has no CSR section to its website and Tullow Oil doesn\u2019t publish figures on how much hazardous waste it produces.<\/p>\n

BG Group does publish figures on hazardous waste but with no year-on-year comparison, leading to a frustrating hunt through the website in order to achieve any comparison.<\/p>\n

Taking the Long View<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nShell<\/a><\/div>\n

Royal Dutch Shell\u2019s website follows one of the golden rules of good website design: \u201ckeep it clean, keep it simple\u201d.<\/p>\n

It has a single simple page to deal with waste disposal which acknowledges drilling muds as hazardous waste.<\/p>\n

It also has ten years\u2019 worth of data of their hazardous waste production and a handy graph to help you digest the data quickly and easily.<\/p>\n

The availability of this data shows it pays to take the lead in CSR reporting. With over ten years\u2019 worth of figures they can demonstrate a commitment to environmental responsibility.<\/p>\n

It makes their competitors, with only a few years\u2019 worth of data, appear as though they’re uncaring and only doing this because regulations oblige them to.<\/p>\n

More data, more transparency<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\nBP<\/a><\/div>\n

BP also acknowledges that drilling muds (or fluids, as it calls them) are hazardous. In addition, it makes three categorical statements which are far bolder than its competitors:<\/p>\n