Soil Protection and Oil Spills

Soil and groundwater protection is an issue that Eni considers to be of prime environmental relevance and to which it is totally committed, both in organisational and economic terms.

Eni carries out actions to recover sites that it owns through the detailed characterisation of the environmental matrices affected by contamination and adopts immediate measures to protect groundwater, building hydraulic barriers associated with water treatment plants.

Where possible efforts are also made for the selective recovery of chemical and organic products that may have been left by operational activities, as well as the removal of the polluting agents of waste materials.

Eni, in conformity with current legislation and in line with the highest international standards, applies risk analysis as a tool to plan and design recovery efforts at contaminated sites to be proposed to local and national authorities for approval.

As part of its operations aimed at preventing and protecting the soil from industrial risks, Eni has also developed operations aimed at preventing and containing oil spills by:

• introducing specific operational procedures and management systems;
• controlling, preventing and protecting its operations from dangerous situations;
• constantly reducing the possibility of risk in all its operational activities.

Eni has implemented a series of integrated measures aimed at reducing oil spills in the production, loading and transportation of oil products.

The total number of barrels spilled decreased for the second year in a row (-25%). A total of 28% of the volume spilled was due to sabotage, while the volume spilled due to accidents decreased by 30% compared to 2007.

In 2008, Eni participated and contributed to international initiatives such as:

• OSPRI Oil Spill Preparedness Regional Initiative: collaboration with countries in the Caspian Sea area to increase the ability to respond to oil spills;
• COSPIP Coastal Oil Spill Improvement Program: program aimed at developing strategies and build oil-spill-prevention equipment in the Barents Sea;
• GLWACAF Global Initiative West And Central Africa: project that involves area governments in developing reciprocal aid agreements;
• Oil in Ice JIP: project aimed at developing tools and technologies to increase the capacity to respond to oil spills in ice-covered waters.
• OSPREC Oil Spill Response Company: company established with the purpose of minimizing the risk of oil spills along Algeria's coastline