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TNK-BP presents report on sustainable development to environmental NGOs

Targeted expenditure on conservation programmes, including operating costs and investment, amounted to 9.6 billion roubles in 2012

MOSCOW, December 25 (Itar-Tass) —— The TNK-BP management has presented a report to leading NGOs on the company’s key projects to minimise its environmental impact in 2012, including the latest data on its associated gas utilisation, incident rates, pipeline replacement program and legacy pollution remediation, the company said in a statement on Tuesday, December 25 .

Targeted expenditure on conservation programmes, including operating costs and investment, amounted to 9.6 billion roubles in 2012. In the course of the year, the company dismantled 1,550 kilometres of pipelines in the Khanty-Mansiisk Autonomous District and began remediation work on 522 hectares of oil-contaminated land. In 2013, TNK-BP plans to boost its spending on these programs to 10.1 billion roubles.

Since the company’s establishment it has invested over 60 billion roubles in environmental programmes and has set up a dedicated 500 million U.S. dollar fund to address its legacy environmental problems. This has resulted in the restoration of 3,199 hectares of land contaminated in Soviet times, when insufficient attention was paid to environmental issues. The company plans to complete the remediation of all its legacy pollution by 2019.

During the meeting, TNK-BP and representatives of organisations including the World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, the Russian Bird Conservation Union, Wetlands International, Transparent World and the Khanty-Mansiisk Autonomous District’s Econadzor, agreed to continue developing the format of open dialogue on sustainable development issues to disseminate best practices of cooperation between oilmen and ecologists throughout the Russian oil and gas industry.

“TNK-BP is committed to efficient interaction with the environmental NGOs. We’ve established a transparent system of information disclosure – we hide nothing and are committed to making our policies and activities as open as possible. Ongoing dialogue with environmentalists and discussion of the most topical issues are a vital factor in making the company’s conservation work more effective. We are grateful to our colleagues for their constructive criticism and, most importantly, their recommendations on improving our work to minimize the company’s environmental footprint,” Yelena Kompasenko, Vice President, Health, Safety and Environment, said.

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