Total has made a three-pronged and sustainable commitment to Congo’s civil society, focusing on economic and social development, health and education.”  The Total code of ethics is not confined to its technical activities; it also applies to health and education within the framework of national, regional and local development.

As the main driver of Congo’s development, the monetization of its crude oil resources now requires new leaps forward in order to produce reserves bypassed to date due to a lack of the technology needed to access them. With technological advances in areas ranging from seismic to drilling, Total E&P Congo is mobilizing its full range of expertise, and innovating to meet a variety of challenges.

All the fields currently operated by Total E&P Congo – located in conventional offshore depths of less than 200 meters – have entered their phase of maturity or decline. Experts in an array of fields (including the geosciences, drilling and operations) are pooling their know-how to prolong the life of these fields. However, the country’s oil future also hinges on deepwater and ultra-deepwater resources. As a member of the highly restricted circle of oil companies that can boast successful experience in this frontier technology, the Group is sharing the benefits of its expertise with the Congo.

The production start on Moho-Bilondo slated for 2008 will inaugurate a new chapter in the history of the Congolese oil industry, atwater depths ranging from 540 to 660 meters. Looking beyond this initial mission, Total E&P Congo is seeking to act on the potential of the Andromède Marine 1 and Pégase Nord Marine 1 fields discovered by the Group in 2000 and 2004 on the Mer Très Profonde Sud permit, involving water depths of 1,893 and 2,000 meters respectively. These two successes are a direct benefit of the Group’s mastery of the very latest advances in seismic reprocessing.

Respecting people and the environment

Safety is an absolute priority for the Group; Total E&P Congo as well as its contractors and subcontractors all make safety a constant focus. Through staff training and awareness-building concerning the inherent risks of the Exploration & Production sector, the Company has forged a safety culture according to which every employee has a duty to demonstrate the Company’s social responsibility in every aspect of his day-to-day activities.

Posting a lost-time reportable incident rate of 1 per million manhours in 2004, the safety performance of Total’s Congolese subsidiary is consistent with Group targets. The figure is all the more impressive given the relatively high average age of its employees, most of whom were recruited during the oil boom of the 1980s when safety concerns were not as acute as they have become today. They proved capable of changing their mindset and taking new imperatives on board.

In its role as operator, Total considers its dual commitments to optimize the value of resources while preserving air and water quality as the two sides of its responsibility toward future generations. Wherever the Group operates, it applies its own standards – which are often more stringent than local regulations. Operating mature fields, where water can account for 70% or more of total produced quantities, the Congolese entity of the Group makes preserving water quality a cornerstone of its environmental policy. In 2004, the hydrocarbon concentration in water discharged to the sea was 50 mg per liter; by mid-2005, it had been lowered to less than 35 mg per liter and efforts for further improvement are ongoing.

At the same time, Total is tackling the problem of greenhouse gas emissions. In line with its determined strategy in this area, the Group has abandoned routine flaring on all new fields since 2000. The forthcoming Moho-Bilondo development will set an example in the Congo in this respect, since the no-flare requirement was a pillar of the development concept. On older fields, where flaring performance is naturally less exemplary, the aim now is to curb emissions. By increasing the gas reinjection compression capacity of the Nkossa field in 2002, for example, the subsidiary managed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 30% between 2002 and 2004.Thanks to works now under way on the field, routine flaring will cease completely in the first quarter of 2006.

Social projects for the long term

Total E&P Congo intends to play a role in the country’s sustainable development beyond the strict framework of its technical know-how. The Company’s three-pronged involvement in Congo’s civil society focuses on education, health (see opposite) and economic and social development. In each area, the guiding principle is to support concrete projects which, although designed to deliver benefits as quickly as possible, are nevertheless planned for the long term.

Because it is the soil in which the nation’s future skills will take root, Total E&P Congo decided to make a commitment to education, a sector now rebuilding itself after years of civil war. In addition to its “emergency” supply of 500 desks and seats to Kouilou schools annually since 2001, the subsidiary’s goal is to help offset the shortage of university graduates in the industrial region of Pointe-Noire.

Along with the particularly high stakes it carries for the country as a whole, this effort is crucial for Total E&P Congo, whose desire to recruit local staff is often foiled by the shortage of skilled local professionals, especially engineers. Thus, in working to expand the offering of scientific and technical training options, the subsidiary is serving the needs of the country as well as its own goal of increasing the proportion of native Congolese on its payroll from the current level of about 80%.
A perfect example of this policy in action is the Institut Supérieur de Technologie d’Afrique Centrale (ISTAC) in Pointe-Noire, which is housed by the company. This technology institute is a branch of the Central African Catholic University in Yaoundé and offers a two-year technical degree course in industrial maintenance. Total E&P Congo awards a scholarship to the top two Congolese students of each ISTAC graduating class, as well as a preliminary recruitment status to a few students who are accepted into the ensuing three-year program taught in Yaoundé (Cameroon),leading to an engineering degree. Students receive a stipend that enables them to pay for their schooling in Cameroon and are given opportunities for work-study or sandwich training. Completing this program should facilitate their recruitment by Total E&P Congo.

Wherever it operates, the Group also has a policy of giving preference to local businesses when contracting with partners for its industrial developments.
To contribute to the emergence of potential contractors, still a rarity in the Congolese market, the Company actively promotes the Association Pointe-Noire Industrielle (see box, p. 7), and provides office space for the secretariat of the association. Renvoi APNI
Concurrent with its initiatives to promote national and regional development, Total E&P Congo also pursues efforts on a more local scale to improve the living conditions of communities adjacent to its industrial facilities.

In the Congo, initiatives to promote social welfare have focused for a number of years on the population of Djeno, a small village community located near the oil terminal, which is the Company’s only onshore installation renvoi djeno. Thanks to dialogue with the 1,500 residents, combined with a participatory approach that keeps them actively involved in the definition of their own needs, Djeno is seeing the emergence of microprojects which, from market gardening to livestock, are the seeds from which profitable and sustainable activities will grow.