Community relations

Alignment of corporate and local priorities has long been a key driver of Addax Petroleum’s community relations programs. We believe that the fundamental needs of a community should be identified and addressed by the members of the community. With this approach, Addax Petroleum partners with local organizations and its own employees living and working in the community to identify the projects that provide the most value and most appropriately meet community needs. These programs deliver financial support for a range of education, training and infrastructure projects that offer real and immediate benefits to people.

Our approach

To help identify projects, Addax Petroleum hosts regular town hall meetings and local stakeholder consultations to gather information and evaluate needs in the community. Examples of the new projects that were developed and supported in Nigeria in 2007 include assisting host communities to form co-operative societies to enable access to soft loans, developing a partnership with United Bank for Africa Plc to provide micro credit for host communities and developing an ophthalmologic campaign benefiting more than 1,200 inhabitants of the communities of Izombe and Eziorsu in Imo State. In all locations where it operates, Addax Petroleum continues to focus on programs and facilities, such as schools, roads and clean water systems, which create an immediate benefit for the communities.

Case studies

We are always happy and enthusiastic to see that indigenous companies pursuing joint venture opportunities regard us as a partner of choice. Furthermore, strong local relationships and community investments have made a positive contribution to the stability of Addax Petroleum’s operations.

In 2007, Addax Petroleum created a rugby club in Lagos. It is made of Nigerian children - aged between 9 and 16 - and adults (including women) from Lagos and nine surrounding states, who live on less than $1 a day. The initiative was launched to combine social, cultural and religion divides within the community. With the help of Touraid, a children's charity that establishes relationships between schools and clubs in the UK with organisations around the globe, the children flew to England in March to take part in the world's largest rugby tournament: the Rosslyn Park National Schools Sevens. New tournaments are planned for this year.

Other examples of community relations projects supported by Addax Petroleum are listed in the fact sheets below:

• From Blight to Bloom at Izombe Farmland, Nigeria
  
• Eye Care Provision for Host Communities, Nigeria
  
• Improving Local Infrastructure, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq
  

Biodiversity

At a corporate and local level, Addax Petroleum continues to support key conservation initiatives, including:

• Two programs with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), consisting of improving fluvial transportation around the Ogooué and Fernan-Vaz Rivers in Gabon and in facilitating a peaceful transfer of authority on the Bakassi peninsula from Nigeria to Cameroon.
• An international research and education centre for the study of primates, biodiversity research and forest management in the tropical rainforest of Cross River State, Nigeria. The research centre is run by CERCOPAN, a Nigerian environmental NGO (see fact sheet for more information).

To improve local environmental concerns in Nigeria, Addax Petroleum has committed considerable resources towards ceasing gas flaring.