Group EHS Manager Q&A

Q: How important is EHS to Tullow?

EHS is paramount to a successful business and good EHS performance in Tullow is a core part of our business drivers.

Q: How is EHS managed across Tullow?

The Tullow Board of Directors has ultimate responsibility for EHS in Tullow. Paul McDade, Tullow's Chief Operating Officer, is the Executive Director with specific responsibilities for EHS and this responsibility is cascaded through the organisation to ensure EHS is a key part of every employee's role.

Tullow manages this process through an EHS Leadership Team that ensures the correct strategy and objectives are in place across the Group. We identify and manage our major EHS risks and regularly review this process. We also have a competent and experienced EHS Team in place that can provide independent support and guidance to the business and its leadership.

Q: Does the group operate to a single set of EHS standards?

There is an EHS policy for Tullow which is approved by Senior Management and signed by Aidan Heavey, the CEO. The Group also has an Integrated Management System which is applied across the business and EHS is firmly embedded in each key process and procedure.

Q: Who ensures our operations meet the EHS standards across the group?

Although the leadership at Tullow set clear EHS standards and objectives, there is a culture that every employee has individual responsibility for the safety of themselves and others. Our line management has a key responsibility to ensure EHS standards are met across the Group with support from their specific EHS Team members.

Tullow also has an internal audit process focussed on EHS, which provides assurance at either local or corporate level. In addition, we invite an independent organisation to externally certify our Environmental Management System to the international standard, ISO14001. Finally, we assure the core of our EHS performance data through Deloitte and report this openly through our Annual and Corporate Responsibility Reports and our website.

Q: The industry is in the spotlight with regards to its EHS performance. Have Tullow placed greater emphasis on it?

Tullow has always put a real focus on EHS and continuously improving our performance. As a result we always seek to learn from incidents. This is particularly important when major industry events occur, such as the Macondo incident in the Gulf of Mexico. This resulted in us carrying out additional internal reviews of our performance. The outcome of these reviews was that we found our well engineering to be robust and our oil spill capability to be of a good industry standard. We did find non critical areas where we could improve our approach and we are working on doing just that. We also focused on understanding the industry implications and ensuring we align our future business to meet the expected change in standards.