Our impact on communities

We recognize that our activities can have a negative impact on the rights of people in communities near our sites

We screen our projects to minimize the risk of this happening and work with local people to prevent, reduce and manage any impacts that occur. For example, in Mauritania and Senegal, we’ve developed a framework for engagement with local fishing communities. We’ve put in place community liaison officers to provide a focal point for contact, introduced feedback and grievance mechanisms, and forged strong links with the community council, which represents local stakeholders. Using a project patrol boat has also helped us and local fishermen to avoid unauthorized vessels from entering the safety exclusion zones near to our operations.

Community feedback

We have operational-level community grievance mechanisms in place to capture feedback, including complaints. This can come through direct engagement with bp employees, especially community liaison officers, and by email or telephone. We try to respond to substantiated complaints promptly and when we’ve caused or contributed to any adverse impact, we provide or co-operate in providing remediation through legitimate processes.

In 2019, most of the concerns raised by people living near our projects and operations related to damage to their property or crops and also to job opportunities. Overall, the number of complaints decreased. We attribute this to the fact that key projects have now become steady-state operations.

In Azerbaijan, throughout the Shah Deniz 2 and South Caucasus Pipeline Expansion (SCPX) projects and subsequently in the operations phase, we’ve worked closely with the communities affected by our activities, engaging with them to communicate and explain the processes we use to manage community concerns and social risks.

In many cases our community engagement and grievance management mechanisms are open to stakeholder monitoring, such as project leaders’ consultant reports and site visits. In addition, information on our social performance is widely shared with the relevant communities, as well as local and international NGOs.

In 2019 we engaged with Crude Accountability – a US NGO promoting environmental and human rights in the extractive industries – in order to discuss our community engagement processes.