Paula Luff of Hess Corporation: We are moving in the right direction

Our series of interviews with CSR professionals in American companies continues. This time my attention was drawn toward a global company in the extractive industry, Hess Corporation.

Paula Luff, Hess Corporation's Director of Corporate Social Responsibility and I talked about the beginnings of corporate responsibility, the way the company’s internal processes and relationships with stakeholders evolved over time, the company’s environmental impact and community development efforts. If you have additional questions or comments, please share them in the comments section below.

LC: How did Hess Corporation’s commitment for social and environmental issues begin?

PL: The company’s commitment has been an integral part its operations and extremely important to our senior management since its very beginning. However, a distinct moment in the past does come to mind. Hess Corporation has long had operations on the island of Saint Lucia. In 1980 the devastating Hurricane Allen wiped out virtually all schools on the island. Mr. Leon Hess – the company’s founder – committed to rebuilding those schools and consequently the company worked with the island government in this effort. That project was also in line with the company’s broader interest in improving education in countries where it operated.

LC: How have Hess Corporation’s internal processes improved since it embraced corporate responsibility? How have relationships with your main stakeholders improved?

PL: The first area the company began to address was safety. We also looked at our human rights record and transparency issues. In the late 90’s, the company began to think more systematically about corporate responsibility and the company became really focused on measuring its environmental impact. The company became a signatory to and active in the UN Global Compact. We are also active in the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative and Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights. The company is really good at anticipating potential risks and addressing them accordingly. All these efforts came together and became more refined over the last eight-ten years. The company excels at collecting and using data to track progress in all these areas.

As for the stakeholders, the company’s culture is very low-key. We don’t do a lot of media relations. However, our senior executives are very involved in a variety of stakeholder relations directly. We make sure that our suppliers understand that they need to embrace our code of conduct and international conventions that we are proud to support.

LC: Has your environmental impact reduced? Is it going to be even smaller tomorrow?

PL: Doing business in the extractive industry is inherently challenging from the environmental perspective. Today the company is bigger than it was ten years ago, so the environmental impact has increased due to organic growth of companies’ operations. Nonetheless we have initiated carbon-sequestration efforts in Algeria and Equatorial Guinea which will help to progressively reduce the company’s footprint over the next several years. We have a huge focus on other parts of the environmental impact, including an energy conservation program across the company. At least 10% of energy consumed by the company comes from renewable sources. We are moving in the right direction.

LC: Please tell us about one corporate responsibility initiative that Hess Corporation is most proud of.

PL: It is an one of our philanthropy initiatives which is being carried out in partnership with the government and the Academy for Educational Development in Equatorial Guinea. The objective of the program is to transform the primary education in this country. It is a pilot project, but due to the country’s small population (about half a million people), the scope of the project is quite significant. Together with our partners we have refurbished 40 primary schools and equipped them with all necessary educational materials. We are also drilling water wells and building latrines at these schools to improve water access to water and sanitation. We are also training 1,200 teachers and developing new curriculum. The community leaders have been engaged in this program so as to ensure a high degree of sustainability through community buy-in and ownership. Parents have also been very involved and are very excited about the impact of this program on the schools and the community. Another big piece of the program is working with the Ministry of Education to build policy implementation capacities needed to effectively provide universal primary education. We are very proud about the results of this program and the impact we helped achieve.

Note: For more about Hess Corporation’s CSR efforts please check the company's annual reports.