CHAPTER 17 USING SOUND PUBLIC HEALTH SCIENCE TO PROMOTE RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
| Jurisdiction | Derecho Internacional |
(Apr 2015)
USING SOUND PUBLIC HEALTH SCIENCE TO PROMOTE RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
Shareholder and Director
Burns, Figa & Will, P.C.
Greenwood Village, Colorado 80111
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MICHAEL T. JEWELL is a Director and Shareholder at the law firm of Burns, Figa & Will, P.C. in Greenwood Village, Colorado where he serves as the Head of Oil, Gas, and Minerals practice group. Michael frequently speaks to local and national audiences on issues affecting mineral development, and he is the recent past Chair of the Natural Resources and Energy Law Section of the Colorado Bar Association. In addition to his practice in natural resources law, Michael serves as Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, where he teaches courses in public health law and researches the efficacy of public health interventions by mineral operators. Michael earned his Bachelor of Arts in History from Louisiana College in 2001, where he also studied at the University of London. He received his Juris Doctor from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law in 2007 after completing a Master of Public Health (International Health Systems Management) degree from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in 2002.
Abstract: Successful resource projects must effectively communicate real and perceived public health impacts of modern oil & gas development--whether the issue is clean air at drill sites, endangered species, worker health, or permitting. This paper presents an introduction to public health science and use of data to promote resource development projects. It also provides a primer to creating, structuring, and maintaining public health interventions, along with case studies. Emphasis will center on cost-effective monitoring and evaluation plans that collect accurate data for epidemiological analysis.
Introduction2
Among myriad strides in public health science that have made the most positive endemic impacts on morbidity and mortality in community health over the last 200 years, few rival the benefits of affordable and locally available energy resources.3 Cheap energy empowers communities to provide for basic modern services, which in turn shifts the labors of a community away from the mundane to higher potential activities. This shift provides not only the immediate health benefits of transportation of clean water, medicine, supplies, but also contributes more broadly to establish the economic bases for which high level and more equitable health care delivery systems can take root. More than just electricity or gasoline, cheap and accessible energy drives individuals and governments to diversify their potentials, which raises the standard of living for entire groups.4
Questions surrounding the future of fossil fuels usage5 and their environmental externalities will continue to dominate the headlines for years to come. Despite these ongoing global decisions on the sourcing of energy, a steady (for the developed world) and increasing supply (for the developing world) of energy resources, particularly in parts of the world with little to no access to cheap energy, must
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continue. Failure to properly realize the urgency of energy would invite serious ethical inquiry, as the benefits of energy extend even beyond public health benefits to other realms of human rights.6
World Development Indicators7
While the scope of this article does not include a full discussion of the known externalities involved with energy production, it does presuppose a snapshot in time that suggests over one hundred years' worth of available reserves (at current usage rates), which translates into at least two more generations where the extractive industries will contribute to societal needs.8 Therefore, the goal of this paper is to assist energy companies, particularly those engaged in the extraction of oil and gas, to realize, harness, and engage public health tracking in a manner that is consistent with science and in balance with the need to communicate the health benefits of energy. More specifically, this paper drills down to the level of community engagement, both domestically to the United States and internationally, to illustrate how oil
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and gas companies can better promote better health outcomes in the communities they serve by making even relatively small changes in their corporate mindset.9
The group of tables above illustrates an interpretation of data to suggest the correlation of energy availability and increased life expectancy, which is a standard measure of global health. Note also that the creator of the chart realizes that with these advances come externalities, as shown by the incremental increase in C02 emissions. Despite this, the data can be further taken to drive the point that these externalities can be mitigated by oil and gas operators at the community level while the greater value of health benefits is experienced.
Engagement and Evaluation - An International Example
In order to take advantage of substantial untapped oil reserves in Chad, ExxonMobil (operating as Esso), along with Chevron and Petronas Malaysia, built a pipeline to be able to transport extracted oil from Chad to the coast of Cameroon that was completed in 2003.10 Many communities along the route of the pipeline expected major economic benefits from the pipeline,11 particularly because of the World Bank's
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backing of the project.12 Many of those communities expressed disappointment from an apparent lack of steady work and other related economic benefits the project has imparted.13 Despite economic disappointments, ExxonMobil effectively implemented a program to combat malaria in its Chad and Cameroon operations.
Malaria continues to be one of the deadliest diseases on earth, based on estimated worldwide deaths.14 This is despite the frustration that malaria is technically simple to prevent,15 though it pervades poorer third world nations that fight mosquito infestation.16 Environmentalists suggest that malaria presents an interesting conundrum in the oil and gas world as many link climate change to oil and gas extraction. Climate change is connected with increased precipitation.17 Increased precipitation leads to more bodies of standing water, the breeding ground for mosquitos, which are the primary vectors of malaria. By extension, the arguments allege that oil and gas operations encourage the proliferation of malaria.18
Many oil and gas companies have operations in Africa,19 where malaria is a pressing and increasing concern.20 This tension should cause oil and gas operators to consider the essentiality of baseline studies and ongoing monitoring and publishing of malarial rates, particularly as they implement and promote any anti-malarial strategies. Such strategies could have major benefits in terms of demonstrating the potential health contributions of oil and gas operations to local communities, and could also positively contribute to the discussion regarding climate change, the extractive industries, and malaria.
ExxonMobil states that it is the first oil and gas company to develop a "Strategic Health Management initiative ... now widely adopted in the energy industry."21 It implements strategic health management (SHM) initiatives in various ways in its operations around the world. Its operations in Chad and
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Cameroon are particularly demonstrative examples of its SHM framework, particularly with regard to ExxonMobil's anti-malaria campaign in Cameroon.
ExxonMobil's operations in Chad include 46,000 onshore acres.22 ExxonMobil reported that, as of 2013 (after 10 years of production), the Chad/Cameroon project "deliver[ed] almost 500 million barrels of oil to world markets."23 Although ExxonMobil "provide[s] project-management services" in furtherance of the pipeline's operation,24 in Chad, the pipeline is operated by Tchad Oil Transportation Company (TOTCO), and in Cameroon, it is operated by Cameroon Oil Transportation Company (COTCO). Although the extraction of the natural gas occurs in Chad, the pipeline is primarily located in neighboring Cameroon. The pipeline spans a total of 1070 kilometers (around 669 miles),25 890 kilometers (556 miles) of which are in Cameroon.26
During early construction of the pipeline in 2000, ExxonMobil suffered the results of high malarial incidence rates in its employees. For every 1000 employees, there were 1,750 cases of malaria a year, which caused productivity losses of $4 million.27 Recognizing the threat to the economic efficiency of the project, as well as the potential reputational harm that could occur due to communal malarial incidences, the ExxonMobil Foundation and COTCO funded and facilitated a study on the causation and rates of malarial infection along the pipeline corridor.28 This baseline study flagged one of the three geographic zones, Bipindi, as having the highest incidence of malaria, and also as having the lowest rate of insecticide-treated mosquito net usage.29 The study concluded that the malarial prevalence rate in the Bipindi region was 55.5% during the wet season, but the insecticide-treated bed net usage rate was only 37.86%.30
In response to these alarming results, the ExxonMobil Foundation partnered with several nongovernmental organizations and the Cameroonian government to increase antimalarial education and messaging, and to distribute treated mosquito nets and malaria testing kits.31 ExxonMobil supported the Cameroon," 12 Malaria J. 36 (2013).
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distribution of 8 million insecticide-treated bed nets throughout Cameroon.32 ExxonMobil did not publish the direct results of these efforts for all of the regions along the pipeline corridor. However, one source reported that in Kribi, the coastal city where the pipeline ends in Cameroon, malarial...
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