I should have knocked on wood
last week when I wrote that post about "sunny" London. Why? Since my last
post, the weather has been mostly cold, downcast and generally unpredictable.
Still,
London has remained a total babe, rain or shine. I mean, come on:
And
the unpredictable precipitation just gives me something to chat about in elevators or the back of taxis. I find that Brits complain about the weather with the same natural
reflex that the rest of the world reserves for gulping in air between
sentences. And trust me, I love complaining as a form of small talk, so
crack on with all of this weather chatter! I'm right there with ya.
(In
the breathtakingly lifelike portrait above, I can be seen engaging in my new
favorite past time, complaining about how cold it is!)
But
enough about the weather- there are more important things to discuss. This
week, I started work at IPIECA, the global oil and gas industry association for
environmental and social issues. IPIECA was formed in 1974 and has since served
as the industry’s principal channel of communication with the United Nations.
With 37 members, IPIECA covers more than half of the world’s oil production,
and helps the oil and gas industry improve its environmental and social
performance in 4 key ways:
1. Developing, sharing
and promoting good practices and solutions.
2. Enhancing and
communicating knowledge and understanding.
3. Engaging members and
others in the industry.
4. Working in partnership
with key stakeholders.
IPIECA does this work by drawing on the skills
and expertise of its international membership and key stakeholders, through the
interface of member-led working groups. IPIECA has working groups that address
specific issues, such as biodiversity, climate change, health, oil spill
preparedness, fuels and products, reporting, social responsibility and water.
Although
most of my work will be done with the social responsibility working group, I
have been fortunate enough to participate in projects for some of the other
working groups such as fuels and products, and health. I hope to have the
opportunity to experience all of the working groups before the end of the
summer, in order to get a big picture understanding of the workings of the oil
and gas industry, and the varied ways in which the industry must operate in
order to be environmentally and socially responsible.
Indeed, in the week that I have been here, I have really come to respect
the chain-of-events oriented, high-level understanding that is necessary when
trying to make significant impact on industries and global issues. Earlier in
the week, I wrote a briefing on the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, an
annual report released by BP that describes the state of world energy in the
past year.
Although it would take many longwinded blog
posts to describe all of the fascinating things contained in the report, I
found it most interesting to learn about the diverse variables that influenced global energy production and consumption in the past year, and the chain of
events that were subsequently set off.
Within the Rube Goldberg-esq machinery that is
the global energy market, many seemingly unrelated variables - technology
breakthroughs (the US shale revolution,) weather events (a historically mild
winter in Europe,) economic climates (slowing growth of China’s GDP rate,) and
geopolitical events, (such as the Arab Spring and the conflict between Russia
and Ukraine,) – all come together to produce industry realities that have broad
sweeping trickle-down effects all over the world. In this case all of these events came together to produce the slowest aggregate growth rate of energy consumption since the 1990s. (Disregarding the year of the financial crisis, that is.)
While learning about all of these things, it became abundantly clear that understanding the way the machinery works is the first step towards driving the engine in the direction you want it to go…which is toward social and environmentally
responsible industry practices. (See what I did there? I know. Totally
insufferable.)
In
my next blog post, I’ll discuss office culture, (everyone is so sweet!) and my experience at the retirement lecture of Georg Kell, Executive Director
of the UN Global Compact.
See you soon!
