StatoilHydro employs approximately 29,500 people worldwide. Our people are central to the delivery of the StatoilHydro business strategy and sustainable development policy. In 2008 we continued to advance our people strategy, which mainly focuses on integrating post-merger best practices, maintaining cooperation with our unions, recruiting, developing skills and improving employee performance.

Cooperation with unions. Our cooperation with the unions has been improved by redefining the agreement between the parties in ICEM. Our process for people performance, development and deployment has been simplified and improved.

Recruitment. The percentage of non-Norwegians working at our various locations in Norway has increased from 5.12% in December 2007 to 5.88% in December 2008. At the end of 2008, 11,400, or 39% of our people were employed outside Norway.

StatoilHydro is a knowledge and technology-based company, and we place great emphasis on the fact that our people are highly qualified to do their work: 56% of the employees in StatoilHydro ASA have a university or college background, and 27% have a craft certificate. StatoilHydro is the private company that employs most apprentices in Norway, and 176 apprentices joined our company in 2008. The total number of apprentices in StatoilHydro in December 2008 was 337.