 ConocoPhillips is committed to protecting the environment. In all of the company's operations, the highest environmental standards are implemented to ensure that the company's actions today will not only provide energy, but will also secure a stable environment for tomorrow.
ConocoPhillips implements environmental policies and procedures to help create sustainable ecosystems, protect wildlife habitats, minimize the impact of our operations and improve the communities in which we operate to ensure a sustainable environment for the future. In addition to following strict environmental regulations, the company works individually with local communities to meet their specific environmental needs. ConocoPhillips also works closely with environmental organizations to support philanthropic projects.
Environmental Conservation
ConocoPhillips believes it is crucial to balance its presence in communities with environmental needs by taking responsible measures to protect the diverse ecosystems. In the Arctic Circle, where more than one-third of the company's global reserves are located, ConocoPhillips has taken many steps to reduce the negative impacts of our operations, such as forming the Arctic Technology Council to exchange knowledge and best practices among several of our businesses, investing in Arctic environmental research projects and studying wildlife habitats to help engineers plan their projects to minimize environmental impact. For more than 15 years, ConocoPhillips has worked with communities in Canada to protect endangered Caribou by restoring their habitats and minimizing the company's footprint in the area. In Indonesia, the company works closely with local communities to reduce land erosion and restore habitats for tigers, birds and other wildlife to improve biodiversity.
Indigenous Communities
ConocoPhillips partners with indigenous communities wherever we operate to help reduce the negative impacts of the company's operations and also maximize the social and economic benefits for the community. We engage indigenous communities at regional, local, and individual levels by meeting regularly with local leaders, community associations and regional governments to make sure our operations align with their environmental concerns. In Alaska, we signed an agreement with the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and North Slope Village whaling associations to ensure that seismic surveys were compatible with subsistence whaling and hunting and would not interfere with native harvests. In the San Juan Basin of northwest New Mexico and southwest Colorado we operate on Tribal lands of the Navajo, Jicarilla Apache, Southern Ute, and Mountain Ute nations. We consult with these tribal nations and the State Historic Preservation Office to minimize the impacts of operations on sensitive cultural sites and native flora and fauna.
Shrinking the Environmental Footprint
ConocoPhillips' Alpine field in Alaska is recognized as a model for future North Slope developments because of its "near zero-impact" policy: minimal wastes are generated and those wastes are reused, recycled or properly disposed. In Alaska, ConocoPhillips supports a program that identifies and locates abandoned oil drums on Alaska's North Slope using global positioning satellite technology and ensures safe and proper removal of the drums. The "footprint," or the amount of land area required for production facilities, occupies only 97 acres. This is particularly impressive considering the 40,000 acres of subsurface area reached though horizontal drilling techniques.
Environmental Regulations
ConocoPhillips strives to constantly improve our environmental performance and abides by strict environmental regulations. As part of our commitment to protecting the environment, we play an active role in the Environmental Protection Agency's voluntary high production volume chemical testing program. The program provides information on potential health and environmental impacts of chemicals produced in large volumes in the United States. Through testing groups established by the American Petroleum Institute and the American Chemistry Council, ConocoPhillips sponsors health and environmental effects testing on nearly 400 products and refinery intermediate streams.
Life Cycle Assessment
At ConocoPhillips, we aim to minimize the environmental impacts of projects projects throughout their life-cycles. In this process, we try to find new uses for obsolete assets or decommission redundant structures. When the company retired the last single-hulled tankers in its fleet they were converted to floating production, storage and offloading vessels, which extended their life by at least 15 years. Redundant structures in the Ekofisk field in the North Sea have begun to be decommissioned and will be processed, recycled and reused.
Global Water Sustainability
It takes large amounts of water to produce energy. Due to impurities, the water is typically unusable without costly treatment. To help improve the water treatment process, ConocoPhillips is currently establishing a global Water Sustainability Center in Qatar that will examine ways of treating and using by-product water from oil production and refining operations, as well as other projects relating to industrial and municipal water sustainability. This facility will help ConocoPhillips develop more efficient and cost-effective treatment technologies, which could make the treated water suitable for crop irrigation, livestock watering, wildlife habitats and industrial cooling, potentially leaving more fresh-water available for domestic use.
Access the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) site for ConocoPhillips and its subsidiaries.
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