Our Commitment: We are committed to leading water stewardship throughout our operations taking into account local social, environmental and economic conditions in basins and offshore marine areas where we operate. We collaborate with other users, communities and regulators on solutions and align our actions with societal values for protecting and conserving water resources.

Water Science: Global freshwater use has increased as a result of increasing population, economic development and shifting consumption patterns. The United Nations emphasize that access to freshwater is a global issue at the core of sustainable development and critical for socio-economic development, energy and food production, healthy ecosystems and human survival itself. The World Economic Forum has repeatedly ranked ‘water crisis’ as one of the top global risks. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) observational records and climate projections provide abundant evidence that freshwater resources are vulnerable and have the potential to be strongly impacted by climate change, with wide-ranging consequences for human societies and ecosystems.

Water Strategy: Water risks associated with freshwater use, water stress, offshore produced water discharges or onshore produced water disposal by well injection could affect our business through project delays or cancellation, business interruption, or increased costs for supply, discharge/disposal or regulatory requirements. We assess water risks for the asset or life of projects using our Sustainable Development Risk Management Standard. Our assets and projects manage risks and mitigate potential impacts to freshwater resources, taking into account the unique hydrologic, quality, use and ecological settings of areas where we explore or operate.

Our Actions: Our water management approach is designed to manage risks company-wide, from strategic business planning through day-to-day field operations. We focus on:

• Disclosing our water use strategy, portfolio water risks and water performance metrics.
• Integrating sustainable water management into asset planning and project design.
• Ensuring well integrity through well design and construction with multiple layers of steel casing and cement to isolate and protect freshwater zones.
• Applying a science- and risk-based approach when assessing local water resource alternatives and water quality requirements for discharges to the environment.
• Reviewing and adopting new technology to minimize freshwater consumption, optimize water use and to identify best available technology for offshore treatment and discharge of produced water.
• Reusing or recycling onshore produced water where feasible and disposing in dedicated disposal wells in accordance with local regulations.
• Characterizing seismicity risks and monitoring seismic activity.
• Engaging with local communities on water impacts associated with our operations, mitigation actions and proactive initiatives to support water resource management.

Oversight: Our governance structure provides board and management oversight of our risk assessment processes. Water risks rated significant or high, and their associated mitigation actions, are reviewed by the Sustainability and Public Policy Executive Council. Risks identified by application of the Sustainable Development Risk Management Standard are mapped to key categories in the enterprise risk management process and shared with category owners to inform their assessments of risk ranking and mitigation actions. The Public Policy Committee of the board has oversight of all sustainable development issues and reviews the Water Position.