When it comes to reputational risk, the oil and gas industry’s ability to win and maintain public confidence is usually only as good as its weakest link. And as last month’s World Gas Conference in Washington, DC made clear, there is some tension within the industry over those perceived as not pulling their weight. Bigger companies have had to develop strategies to deal with investor concerns over climate change and other sustainability issues, but smaller players, especially private firms, have largely been immune to such worries (PIW Mar.19’18). Smaller companies “don’t have some of the same sustainability guidelines that large companies do,” ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance noted during the conference. “So it is about policing our own and it is about raising the floor.” But doing that is made tougher by the dispa- rate financial pressures companies face. Smaller firms focusing their dollars more on day-to-day operations are less likely to form collaborative efforts with environmental groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund, as some of the majors have done, noted Amy Hemingway, energy director with US public relations giant Edelman, whose research indicates that public trust in the natural gas sector dropped by 4% globally over 2017-18.
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