On June 14 Berlin has hosted the 10th Annual General Meeting of the European Business Congress (EBC). The Meeting was attended by more than 250 representatives from 70 companies and organizations of 21 OSCE member countries. A Gazprom delegation was chaired by Andrey Kruglov, Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee.

The meeting is themed: “Global Challenges: Climate Change and Energy Supply”. EBC has hosted the conference on the said topic. Bogdan Budzulyak, Member of the Gazprom Management Committee, Head of the Department of Gas Transportation, Underground Storage and Utilization reported at the conference on the Gazprom Ecological Policy.

The reporter underlined that Gazprom pays special attention to ecological security for industrial activity. He reminded that in 1995 the Company approved the Environment, Security and Workers’ Health Policy.

The Gazprom’s priority in the ecology sector is to provide stable economic development without destroying the environment, securing nature in the gas production zones, evaluating the influence of the Company’s projects on the environment.

Gazprom provides the performance of the industrial ecological monitoring aimed at providing efficient environment-oriented activity and controlling the progress and results of the Company’s business activities. Under this system chemical analytical laboratories also including mobile laboratories are functioning in all Gazprom’s subsidiaries.

Gazprom developed a constantly progressing ecological management system. In 2007 Gazprom set up an Ecological Inspection, which must provide inspection control to ensure compliance with the legislative requirements for subsidiaries’ business activities in the environment protection sector.

In addition to ecological control the Company provides ecological auditing, which Gazprom firstly applied in Russia.

The Conception of Regional Policy (approved by the Management Committee in 2003) defined the priority for ecological aspects. The ecological security issues are an essential part of the cooperation agreements signed between Gazprom and 78 the Russian Federation regions.

A Company’s core environment security direction is to apply modern engineering and technical solutions enabling to minimize influence on the environment. First of all, the above issue concerns gas transmission. The above solutions include inter alia applying modern gas pumping units with high efficiency coefficient as well as usage of smooth-wall tubes under increased operating pressure.

In the result Gazprom maintains total environment effect rates almost at the same level despite the gas production and transmission growth.

An important element of Gazprom’s environment-oriented activity is an energy saving. Under the execution of the energy saving programs approved by the Company’s Management Committee the total fuel and energy resource savings only during the 2002-2006 period was at 18.5 mln t of fuel equivalent estimated at some US$ 0.5 bln.

“The Gazprom energy saving program execution over 2007 to 2010 will enable to economize 9.2 bcm of natural gas, nearly 2 mln kWh of electric power and some 1212 thousand Gcal of fuel energy. The economy of these fuel and energy resources will definitely have a positive effect on the environment security,” underlined Bogdan Budzulyak.

The Law, Banking and Finance Working Committee chaired by Andrey Kruglov, Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee and Head of Finance and Economics Department and the Business Security Working Committee moderated by Sergey Khomyakov, Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee will hold discussions in the frames of the EBC General Meeting.

Reference:

European Business Congress (EBC) comprises 97 companies from 21 OSCE countries, including such large corporations and banks as Gazprom, ExxonMobil, DaimlerChrysler, Siemens, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Total, Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, Alcatel, Wintershall, E.On Ruhrgas, Gaz de France and others. EBC has its headquarters in Berlin. EBC publishes its bulletin in English and Russian on a quarterly basis.

EBC’s supreme body is the General Meeting. The 30-member Presiding Committee runs the organization. Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee was elected to serve as President of EBC. The 9-member Board of Executive Directors is responsible for executive management.

EBC deals with economic cooperation issues on the European continent and brings forward proposals on building a safe and favorable environment for entrepreneurial activities. EBC operates through six Working Committees for: Information and Technology; Law, Banking and Finance; Energy; Ecology and Healthcare; Business Security; Industry and Construction.