Environment

Care for the environment is part of the CGG way of conducting business. CGG’s environmental policy establishes a mandate to prevent or reduce the company’s footprint and to continually improve its environmental performance.

CGG’s Care+Protect program entails two overarching environmental objectives:

• Implement methods to prevent, reduce or mitigate our footprint
• Lead industry efforts to further investigate and, where necessary, mitigate the effect of our operations on marine life

Footprint minimization

Land crew in the Tunisian desert

Sercel applies a systematic ecodesign approach to the development of geophysical equipment. The environmental objective of a product, its impact in the field, its composition and specifications are all defined at the product development charter stage, which in turn allows for high product recyclability. Sercel’s innovations have consistently brought environmental benefits down the exploration chain.

CGG’s low-impact Land Acquisition seeks to minimize direct interaction with vulnerable habitats and species.

Our Geology, Geophysics & Reservoir (GGR) activities resemble a typical office environment, with our highest potential action in terms of footprint minimization focusing on reducing the electricity consumption of the data centers we operate. Innovative solutions such as evaporative cooling and oil cooling are therefore being deployed in our major data centers, allowing decreasing of GGR's greenhouse gas emissions.

Managing the potential impact of sound on marine life

Soft-starts are delayed if humpback whales are observed close to the energy source

The increasing industrialization of the oceans raises questions about the potential human impact on marine life. CGG has been implementing prevention and mitigation measures for over ten years with the help of marine mammal observers (MMO) and Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) technology. They ensure that a 500-meter exclusion zone around the energy sources being deployed is free from cetaceans and turtles prior to authorizing a gradual ramp-up of sources. This alerts cetaceans and fish of our presence and gives them time to leave the vicinity of our operations prior to sources reaching full power.

Sercel has developed QuietSea, an automated PAM system seamlessly integrated in the seismic spread. Relying on its 58 sensors, QuietSea has been delivering superior marine mammal detection and localization performance across the globe.

In non-regulated areas, CGG follows the guidance issued by the International Association of Geophysical Contractors (IAGC) to reduce risk to cetaceans.

As a member of the IAGC, CGG has also been supporting the Joint Industry Program which has invested more than 40 Million USD since 2006 in research to address scientific knowledge gaps relating to the impact of sound on marine life.