Community Support Relationship
Every oil and gas company active in the Kurdistan Region is encouraged to engage in community support activities. The Kurdistan Regional Government and Ministry of Natural Resources encourage an open forum to discuss the ways in which private enterprise can work together with the government, for the good of the citizens of the Kurdistan Region. By assimilating the UN Global Compact into the oil and gas law, the Kurdistan Region has ensured that local development and corporate social responsibility remain at the forefront of the sustainable development of the region’s energy resources.
Oil companies in the Kurdistan Region engage in corporate social responsibility programmes in two ways. First, they make capacity building payments upon signing the KRG’s production-sharing contract and later when they generate profit oil. These capacity building payments go towards funding large social programmes including infrastructure development. Second, many companies have their own self-funded CSR projects. The data below is for the companies’ self-funded CSR projects.
How social support projects are selected and planned
The corporate social responsibility projects carried out by the operating companies include environmental projects. Talisman Energy since July 2012 has collected an estimated 1 million plastic drinking bottles from their field sites and offices and takes them to a local plastic recycler that eventually turns them into bio-degradable bags. Marathon Oil has been helping to provide clean water to villagers and has set up rubbish collection teams to collect refuse from local villages near its area of operation. In Harir, Marathon is helping to beautify the town through a tree-planting programme.