Premier Oil has finished the first leg of a three-stage social audit by completing auditing in Burma.
The UK-based oil exploration and production company has carried out the investigation as part of a year-long project that is expected to lead to a social report on all its operations by the end of the year.
Conclusions of the monitoring exercise, which is being carried out by the UK-based consultancy EQ Management, are not yet being revealed, but auditors are now visiting Premier facilities in Indonesia and Pakistan on the second and third legs of the social audit. EQ is also looking at the company’s operations in the UK. Verification of the entire process will be carried out by Warwick Business School.
Premier’s manager of global social responsibility, Richard Jones, who is co-ordinating the social audit, said the visits would help the company to devise a ‘social issues management system’ outlining the behaviour expected of staff working in its foreign operations.
‘We need a toolkit that will allow people on the ground to know what we require of them in terms of social responsibility, to delineate our policies and to outline the sensitivities they should be taking account of,’ said Jones.
Premier’s presence in Burma (also known as Myanmar) was criticised at the company’s annual general meeting in May, where critics drew attention to the poor human rights record of the country’s military regime. UK Foreign Office minister John Battle recently wrote to the company asking it to withdraw, but Premier has said it will remain there.
‘Our position is that we believe we can only achieve things through dialogue and engagement at all levels,’ said Jones. ‘We absolutely cannot agree with the [UK] government on this because we think we are on the right track. Our social audit is further distilling the issues and will allow us to take things further.’
The oil company Unocal has attacked pressure groups in the United States that have filed two lawsuits in an attempt to force its withdrawal from Burma.
Unocal said activists had ‘consistently failed to show any involvement by Unocal in any human rights abuses or criminal activity in Burma’.