The IBP focus on promoting the development of the national petroleum and gas industry into a competitive, sustainable, ethical and socially viable industry.
Brazil is ranked as number 80 of 180 countries on Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index for 2008. While this does not make Brazil one of the countries in the world with the highest corruption risks, Brazil has, historically, experienced various corruption scandals.
While the oil and gas companies in Brazil are of the opinion that the industry in general is dominated by sound business practices in certain areas, there are still risks of corruption incidents which may lead to illegal actions, with severe consequences for the companies and persons involved.
In the light of this, the IBP Steering Committee decided to launch an anti-corruption programme called the Zero Tolerance Initiative in October 2007. The oil and gas companies participating in IBP are comitted to implementing the recommendations, and they embrace the Zero Tolerance initiative which aims to make it clear that all forms of corruption are unacceptable. Corruption undermines legitimate business activities, distorts competition, ruins reputations and exposes companies and individuals to risk.
To help to chart corruption challenges, a workshop was scheduled for December 2007. Instituto Ethos, a leading organisation in Brazil in the corporate social responsibility context, was asked to organise the workshop.
The December workshop included 20 representatives from seven companies, plus two facilitators from Ethos. Several risk areas and mitigation measures were discussed.
Drawing on the risk mapping, in 2008 the working group developed a set of recommendations for further actions and an implementation plan for the initiative in Brazil. In line with the recommendations recently approved by the IBP Steering Committee, all committee member companies agreed to support the Zero Tolerance Initiative and the following related commitments:
- To establish a zero tolerance policy towards corruption
- To develop a practical and effective implementation programme for the Zero Tolerance Policy Initiative
- To define programme implementation requirements, and
- To cooperate on mitigating corruption risks through a common approach towards relevant authorities, institutions and companies.
The Zero Tolerance Initiative is to a large extent based on the Business Principles for Countering Bribery developed by Transparency International in cooperation with the Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI) of the World Economic Forum and the Basel Institute on Governance. StatoilHydro is already committed to the Business Principles, and together with many of the other oil and gas companies in Brazil, we are actively supporting PACI.
