Growing Ipieca’s sustainability leadership
The first part of the year saw Ipieca’s sustainability leadership group grow. Enbridge and Vår Energi joined Ipieca. We’ve also appointed two more sustainability experts to Ipieca’s leadership team: Petrobras’s Carlos Gonzalez has been elected as a new Ipieca Vice Chair and ADNOC’s Adnan Madhi joins our Executive Committee.
While on membership news, Ipieca itself is now a new member of the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS). Water is a key topic for Ipieca. We recently published a Water stewardship guidance for the oil, gas and alternative energy industry, which aligns with the five water stewardship outcomes specified by the AWS. We’re excited about contributing to AWS’s vision of a water-secure world that enables people, cultures, business and nature to prosper, now and in the future.
UN World Water Day was celebrated this quarter. We used the opportunity to raise awareness of the day across our membership and beyond, sharing guidance which can help companies to protect this vital shared resource.
Supporting UN shipping, road and aviation conventions
This quarter our support for UN conventions had a distinct transport theme.
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) held a meeting at its London HQ focused on gathering inputs to support its strategy to reach net-zero GHG emissions from shipping by 2050. Ipieca delegates contributed technical inputs to discussions, co-sponsored a proposal for an IMO sustainable fuels certification framework and held a side event on ‘Considerations related to the production, distribution and bunkering of future marine fuels required to enable delivery of the IMO Revised GHG strategy'. Find out more here.
We were also invited to take part in a Benelux Union-UNEP roundtable on cleaner fuels exports focused on driving air quality improvements through the global harmonisation of fuel standards.
An Ipieca delegation of sustainable aviation fuel experts attended the Thirteenth Meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection. Our role with the ICAO is to provide technical expertise in relevant working groups around sustainable aviation fuels and lower carbon aviation fuels.
Ipieca guidance released in Q1
Just like our UN support, good practice guidance is another core role of Ipieca and in fact the two go hand in hand: with our guidance being developed to help companies to align with and support UN conventions.
We published an interactive dashboard showcasing over ten years of Ipieca sustainability survey data highlighting industry reporting practices and priorities.
The Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights
Once again, Ipieca participated in the Annual Plenary Meeting of the Voluntary Principles Initiative (VPI), which celebrated its 25 anniversary this year. The Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights are an internationally recognised set of principles that guide companies on how to conduct their security operations while ensuring respect for human rights. We took part in various panels and discussions, sharing guidance and practices on how to reduce the risks of human rights violations in security operations.
Events agenda
CERAWeek 2025 in Houston brought together leading figures from across the industry, providing a platform to discuss and advance energy and climate solutions. I took part in a panel which explored ways to reduce emissions from oil and gas operations where I shared a selection of Ipieca guidance which can support companies to do this and examples of pathways Ipieca members are taking to decarbonise their operations.
Alongside CERAWeek, I attended a steering group meeting of the Methane Guiding Principles – a group of 46 members of companies, associations and civil society groups focused on reducing methane emissions.
At Ipieca’s London office we hosted a two-day alternative fuels spill tabletop exercise with 30 participants from across shipping, port, regulator and response communities. Three spill scenario exercises focused on marine incidents involving alternative fuels and hazardous and noxious substances: ammonia, liquified natural gas, very low sulphur fuel oil and sulphuric acid. This was the first time we’ve held a marine spill response exercise in our office, and also gave us the chance to put our recently released Alternative fuels factsheets into practice.
Looking ahead, I along with an Ipieca delegation of secretariat and member representatives will be attending Interspill in London next week, where we’ll have a booth and speaker slots sharing guidance and resources to support marine spill prevention, preparedness and response. If you’re also attending, please be sure to come and say hello!
