As we launch our first Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) report to demonstrate our approach to sustainably managing our business today and for the future, I wanted to take a moment to share what ESG means to us.
We have always aimed to manage our business as responsibly as possible, but today’s business environment rightly requires more rigour, and pushes us to codify and communicate our progress.
Well, we are more than happy to oblige. In fact, we are proud of what we have achieved as a business from an ESG perspective and the effects we have in our company, community and supply chains.
Some may question the sincerity of an oil and gas business claiming to care about ESG – especially the ‘E’ part – but we reject any notion of contradiction. The energy transition is well underway, but the fact is we remain dependent on fossil fuels for the near future at the very least. So long as that is true, we have a responsibility to do so as respectfully to our environment as possible. Any other stance risks ceding the field to those who do not set much store by these responsibilities.
Though the language may be new, the spirit is the same. The fact is that Aquaterra Energy has always placed efficiency at the heart of everything we do, whether it’s by using less steel in our product design, or enabling the use of a jack-up rig instead of a heavy-lift barge for our platform installations. Our work is all about supporting our clients’ decarbonisation efforts. We are accustomed to celebrating that efficiency in terms of cost-savings, but it translates into very real emissions-savings too.
And as for the ‘S’ and the ‘G’? Well, we have always ensured that our local communities benefit from our presence and done our best to put in place the best people and processes to manage our company the right way.
This is our first ESG report, but it won’t be our last. We have been reinvigorated by the task of examining our business through this particular lens, and see huge opportunities for us to increase our ESG performance in the future. However, it’s vital that we walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
You can download our first ESG report here – I invite you to inspect the evidence of our efforts and I look forward to discussing how we can work together to do even better next year.