“A new report by Ceres shows that oil and gas companies are not doing enough to manage offshore drilling risks and disclose their efforts to investors.” (Source: Forbes)
Forbes is one of the few media paying attention to this interesting new report on offshore and Arctic drilling for oil and gas.
Extract from this must-read article:
“A new report by Ceres shows that oil and gas companies—Shell included—are not doing enough to manage offshore drilling risks and disclose their efforts to investors. The report, Sustainable Extraction?, examines risk disclosure in SEC filings submitted in the first quarter of 2011 by 10 of the world’s largest oil and gas companies. It finds that out of 50 deepwater risk disclosure scores on key metrics including spill response procedures and drilling risk management, only four scores were good, and 29 (nearly 60 percent) were poor or no disclosure.
This striking lack of disclosure makes it nearly impossible for investors to understand how companies are managing the range of potential drilling risks. And investors are already wary.
Lloyd’s, the world’s largest insurance market, cautions that “the Arctic is a frontier unlike any other” that will “remain a complex risk environment.” In its Arctic Opening report, Lloyd’s highlights geographic remoteness, ongoing changes to the environment as a result of climate change and extreme weather as key risk factors of offshore drilling in the Arctic.”
Thank you for posting this! In light of Shell’s imminent drilling in the Arctic, and what appears to be wishful thinking about its safety readiness, I wrote a blog post on the impact of some of the company’s previous work — on my blog MVMTBLDG http://mvmtbldg.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/shell-in-the-arctic/
Please check it out!