Investors, communities and policymakers often have fundamental questions about the way we manage our social and environmental impacts. Oil and gas development – like all industrial processes – involves risk, and we are dedicated to managing and reducing that risk at every stage of our operations.

Our new Corporate Citizenship Report details how we do that safely and responsibly as we work to provide affordable, reliable energy, which is essential for human progress.

In implementing and reporting on the safety and responsibility of our operations, our goal is not to grab headlines. Rather, we are focused on making long-term incremental improvements that drive sustainable results.

By being detailed and transparent about our efforts, we can communicate best practices and hold ourselves accountable.

To that end, a look through this year’s Corporate Citizenship Report should tell you a lot about ExxonMobil and how we operate. Let me flag just a few of the noteworthy items contained in the report:

• We’ve reduced spills to land and water by 37 percent since 2002, and we’ve reduced hydrocarbon flaring by 18 percent in Upstream operations and 43 percent in Downstream operations over the same period.
• Ninety-nine percent of our private-security contracts worldwide contain explicit language to address human rights issues.
• ExxonMobil has the industry’s only dedicated, in-house oil spill response research program.
• Global lost-time incident rates for ExxonMobil employees and contractors continue to be considerably lower than those for U.S. oil and gas sector employees as a whole.

We take the commitments, achievements and challenges outlined in our report seriously. And, while this report only comes out once a year, we work to improve our performance in these areas all year, every year. We believe that a company must manage safety, environmental, social and economic performance over the long-term in order to maintain a strong business.

After perusing our 2012 report and its key data, please let us know what you think through the feedback portal on our website.