Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um is liv­ing up to its man­date of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, preser­va­tion of the en­vi­ron­ment, and so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ar­lene Chow has said as she told the Busi­ness Guardian that the com­pa­ny is hav­ing a busy year so far.

Last year Her­itage con­tributed $4.8 bil­lion in rev­enue to the gov­ern­ment. Her­itage was in­cor­po­rat­ed on Oc­to­ber 5, 2018 and com­menced op­er­a­tions on De­cem­ber 1 of that year.

Chow said the last four years have been in­tense but very re­ward­ing. Her­itage be­gan op­er­a­tions with 24 em­ploy­ees on staff.

That fig­ure has now grown to close to 500, Chow said. She said no ef­fort is spared in en­sur­ing they main­tain and grow the pro­duc­tion to en­sure the vi­a­bil­i­ty of the com­pa­ny.

The CEO said as­set in­tegri­ty is done an­nu­al­ly be­cause the oil­fields are over 100 years old in some places.

“We are a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor of rev­enue to the gov­ern­ment. Last year we con­tributed $4.8 bil­lion in tax­es which I think is about sev­en to eight per cent of the GDP.

“I think we are do­ing very well, we are pro­duc­ing the oil, we are sell­ing the oil, we are main­tain­ing our fa­cil­i­ties as best as we can to en­sure we keep the hy­dro­car­bons in the pipe,” Chow said.

Con­tin­u­ing to pro­vide an ac­count of Her­itage’s per­for­mance to date, Chow said: “Last year we drilled ten wells on land and our first well off­shore. We had ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 rigs. This year we drilled ten more wells on land and five wells off­shore. We had ap­prox­i­mate­ly 22 rigs run­ning. Rigs do­ing workover, rigs do­ing swab­bing, drilling every­thing. So imag­ine 22 rigs at any giv­en time work­ing both on land and off­shore…it’s sig­nif­i­cant, a lot of ac­tiv­i­ty,” she said.

Chow re­vealed that the com­pa­ny is con­duct­ing its en­hanced oil re­cov­ery pro­gramme be­cause many of the reser­voirs are de­plet­ed due to age.

Asked to com­ment on prices in the cur­rent volatile en­er­gy sec­tor, Chow said the ex­perts are pre­dict­ing mut­ed prices. She re­mind­ed that prices went down dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and then sud­den­ly in­creased with the war in Ukraine to US$100 a bar­rel.

“It would not be as bull­ish as in 2022 and in that re­gard what we have to do is en­sure that we are as ef­fi­cient as pos­si­ble to keep our costs steady so that we can ben­e­fit from the oil we pro­duce even when the prices are low­er. So we ex­pect our rev­enue may be a bit less in 2023 be­cause we don’t think we will have the US$100 oil prices of last year. The ex­perts are say­ing it would be mut­ed and that is what we ex­pect,” Chow said.

On the is­sue of cli­mate change and its im­pact on the world, Chow—who grew up in the coastal town of Ma­yaro said she has seen first-hand the ef­fects of ris­ing sea lev­els. She said Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um is do­ing its part to re­duce its car­bon foot­print but re­mind­ed that Her­itage is a com­pa­ny which is in­volved in oil and gas pro­duc­tion from which gov­ern­ment col­lects a siz­able rev­enue

“Cli­mate change is a re­al­i­ty but we have to bal­ance the two, we have to pro­duce oil and gas so that the coun­try gets rev­enue, we pro­vide sev­en to eight per cent of the GDP.

“We can’t stop be­cause we have to use that rev­enue if we want re­new­ables as well. So we have to think about how we could be sus­tain­able yet pro­duc­ing oil and gas in the fore­see­able fu­ture,” she said.

Chow ex­plained that Her­itage is cur­rent­ly fo­cused on ways and means to bring down harm­ful emis­sions over the next sev­en years.

“We promised gov­ern­ment to re­duce our methane emis­sions by 30 per cent by 2030. So we are look­ing at the land area where we have al­ready re­duced some of it by 30 per cent and we look­ing and quan­ti­fy­ing how much vent­ing and emis­sions of methane we have in the com­pa­ny, un­der­stand­ing our car­bon foot­print and we have promised gov­ern­ment a 30 per cent re­duc­tion of our car­bon foot­print by 2030. We will get there be­fore (2030) I am very cer­tain,” she in­sist­ed.

Chow as­sured, how­ev­er, that she is very much aware of the dan­gers as­so­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change but called on the pop­u­la­tion to un­der­stand that as an oil and gas com­pa­ny, they are piv­ot­ing as much as they can to re­duce their car­bon foot­print and still pro­duce the oil and gas need­ed to run the econ­o­my.

The CEO is par­tic­u­lar­ly proud of Her­itage’s sup­port for small con­trac­tors as a cor­po­rate cit­i­zen.

Chow said the com­pa­ny start­ed a spe­cial pro­gramme for con­trac­tors in the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties where they op­er­ate. She said they are re­quired to come in and reg­is­ter so that they can be giv­en pref­er­ence for projects around the com­mu­ni­ty and out­side as well.