What are the challenges?

One of our main challenges is to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from the production and use of our products. The blending of bio-components in transportation fuel is a measure aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the transport sector. Sustainable production of biofuel components is a challenge for the industry. Regulative and legislative frameworks are under development, but there is no industry standard or well established system regulating sustainability issues in the biofuel supply chain. The challenge for production is to find a way to be as energy-efficient as possible in order to reduce GHG emissions or find technology to capture carbon dioxide from power station flue gases.

What are we doing about it?

Statoil is addressing the challenges of sustainable supply of biofuel by imposing requirements on sellers. Sellers are expected to comply with national laws on soil management, contamination and depletion of water sources, air emissions and burning practices. Compliance with national laws and applicable International Labour Organisation standards with respect to forced labour, child labour, freedom of association and discrimination is also required. Suppliers are also expected to operate in accordance with the United Nation's Global Compact Initiative (UN) and UN Declaration on Human rights, in particular the rights of indigenous people, the right to food and water and the prohibition on forced displacement. Sellers should also commit to respecting land rights and to preventing displacement of food production.

At the Statoil Mongstad oil refinery, energy supply is central to the new combined heat and power (CHP) station. Surplus gas from refining operations is used along with supplies from Troll to generate electricity for the grid and heat for refinery processes. This is an important contribution to meeting regional energy needs, which in turn allows Troll and Gjøa (offshore installations in the North Sea) to be supplied safely and efficiently with power from shore as well as contributing to energy efficiency at the refinery.

Statoil also joined forces with the Norwegian state enterprise Gassnova and Shell to develop and test various types of technology for capturing carbon dioxide from power station flue gases. This work, which is taking place  at the Mongstad oil refinery, aims to come up with solutions that can be applied internationally.

The material safety datasheets (MSDS) and the product data sheet contain descriptions of what the products consist of, how to handle them and any detrimental health or environmental effects. These descriptions comply with EU legislation. In the process of developing new products, we actively seek to find less harmful components and chemicals to reduce the negative impacts of our products.We are in close cooperation with a technical oil industry organisation, CONCAWE , regarding studies on fuel quality, energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from motor fuel, as well as production processes and engine technology. Health and safety impacts of our products are assessed for improvements through EU's chemical regulation programme (REACH). 

What have we achieved?

In January 2009, the Directive of the European Union on Renewable Energy Sources (RED) set a range of sustainability conditions to be met by any biofuel source on the EU market. Statoil has developed sustainability criteria for all biofuel supplies to Statoil based on the RED standards. Based on these sustainability criteria, requirements for sustainable supplies have been made operational and included in Statoil's bio fuel purchase contracts. Statoil has the right to independent auditing of the seller's contractual commitments to sustainability and to audit information on sustainability requirements supplied to Statoil.

In cooperation with the automotive industry, the European Comission and CONCAWE a "well to wheel" study is regularly updated, and the results are published on the Internet (http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/WTW). The database resulting from this work forms the starting point for our selection of environmentally appropriate solutions.In 2009, the volumes of biofuel sold from Statoil reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 287,000 tonnes.