THIRD ESG FOCUS AREA: SUPPORTING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

We continue to play an active part in the economic fabric of our nation. A proud major net earner of foreign exchange and a major contributor to our government’s tax revenues, we are also an employer and supply chain partner that helps facilitate the livelihoods of our citizens and contributes significantly to the country’s socio-economic prosperity.

Over this reporting year, we paid $4.8 billion in taxes (namely supplemental petroleum tax, petroleum profits tax, royalties and levies), which accounted for 8.9% of all revenues collected by the state. We also hired 68 new permanent and fixed-term employees and through our third-party contractors/vendors across the value chain, we support the provision of approximately 4,000 jobs nationally. In 2021-2022, we paid $205 million in employee wages and benefits.

Our compensation practices are aligned to industry standards and are compliant with the State Enterprise Performance Manual. Recruitment and selection, as always, are fair, transparent and consistent. This helps us to provide equal opportunities without discrimination and any other basis prohibited by law.

From a supply chain perspective, our Code of Ethics governs all of our interactions, including those with suppliers, and outlines our commitment to all applicable laws and regulations, including the Procurement

Act. Our supplier vetting process includes evaluating suppliers’ performance and conducting an on-site audit to ensure ethical treatment of their employees, including the absence of child labour.

Key Figures

• $4.8Bn in Taxes (8.9% of revenues collected by the state)

• 94% of total spend on goods and services with local suppliers

• c.1,470 local invited vendors

• c.4,000 jobs: employees and thirdparty contractors

• $205Mn paid in employee wages and benefits

In addition to the scholarships we provide, as in the HERO programme detailed earlier in this report, we also invest in on-the-job training, work experience and mentoring programmes.

Two of our flagship programmes, Graduate Trainee and Student Mentoring, continue to provide practical and invaluable work experience to help participants improve their employability in the job market. Our first cohort of 19 multi-disciplined young leaders had their graduation last year and are now moving forward with their careers.

Our mentoring partnership with the Society of Petroleum Engineers continues to be a progressive and valuable programme, inspiring our six students in their academic journey to date.

But we also developed our more experienced professionals, investing needs assessment-based training, coaching and engagement, proactively listening to their views on how they think we can improve our sustainability efforts. Here what two of our emerging leaders, Melissa and Saul, have to say:

Melissa Persad Operations Engineer

Having joined Heritage in 2019, Melissa is responsible for the management of process chemicals offshore on approximately 25 locations, lending process engineering support for flow assurance issues and assisting in the design of new installations offshore. She is also involved in the calculating of our offshore greenhouse gas emissions.

Excited about our company’s initiative to quantify and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, she proactively participates in a project to identify and quantify gas leaks offshore. She is also leading a project to reduce methane emissions by commissioning a flare system for 2-3million standard cubic feet (mmscf) of natural gas being vented daily. This has now enabled us to embark on a project to utilise this gas in the near future by running a sub sea pipeline to export the gas for usage in another field or as sales gas.

She also believes that asset integrity management is a challenge on the offshore wells and platforms and there is a need for an increased focus in this area. She is confident that we are headed in the right direction with strong leadership and a committed team to go as green as we can.

Saul joined Heritage in early 2020 and is responsible for implementing HSE policies and procedures in daily offshore operations, with a strong focus on incident reduction, regulatory conformance and embedding a robust safety culture across the business unit. He also supports growth and stability projects on the engineering team.

He is inspired by the steps we’ve made thus far in our low carbon/green agenda, particularly our focus on reducing our operational carbon footprint. He supports our drive to reduce carbon emissions through innovative thinking and believes that a reduction in venting will play a key role in reducing the effects of climate change while also improving the efficiency of our business operations.

Saul also thinks that we should continue our focus on asset integrity management and finding ways of implementing technology to overcome the challenges of managing mature brown field operations. He also believes that we can take a holistic approach to addressing our low carbon agenda, encompassing wider aspects of the environment.