Berry is committed to conducting our operations in a manner that maintains, protects, and preserves our natural resources, and promotes a safe and healthy workplace. We believe this will contribute to our continued business success through enhanced job productivity, decreased costs, and improved work quality and employee satisfaction.

Environmental Stewardship

As part of our commitment to responsible environmental stewardship, we aim for 100% compliance with all legal requirements relating to our operations — including standards relating to air, water, and greenhouse gas emissions. As we continue on our ESG journey, we look forward to setting measurable targets for GHG reduction, increasing our beneficial use of produced water, and reducing our solid waste footprint using our 2019 activities as our baseline year.

We work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our operations by using co-generation power plants that reuse heat to produce both steam and electricity together. Our co-generation activity produces enough electricity to power over 100,000 homes annually. We report our GHG emissions to both the California Air Resources Board (CARB) under California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for both our California and Utah operations under the Clean Air Act. Berry regularly coordinates with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the State of Utah Division of Air Quality staff, as well as local air districts and Ute Indian Tribe on projects and issues outside the scope of day-to-day compliance.

Berry is an original member of and holds a board seat on Eastside Water Management Area in Kern County, California, a nonprofit that aims to sustainably manage groundwater for agricultural, industrial, and other beneficial uses. The stakeholders in this water management district include public entities like Kern County, the Kern Groundwater Authority, the State Water Resources Control Board, and water districts, and private entities like agricultural users.

Health
& Safety

Berry is a growing company focused on executing with an obligation to protect the environment and the health and safety of our employees, contractors, customers, and communities.

We promote a “safety-first” culture. As such, Health, Safety & Environmental (HS&E) considerations are an integral part of Berry’s day-to-day operations, and will be incorporated into the decision-making process for all employees, while being supported by the appropriate resources. Routine and periodic drills are conducted as part of our employees’ education and safety training. We also conduct pre-contract reviews of our contractor training records and health and safety programs before contractors enter our worksites, along with periodic audits of compliance with our safety plans, programs, and procedures.

 
 

HS&E Systems
& Actions

The “Berry Systems and Actions for Excellence” (BSAFE) document outlines policies around how we plan to manage the process of Health, Safety & Environmental issues through eleven specific elements.

In support of these objectives, Berry Corporation will:

  • Hold our management and employees accountable for our HS&E performance
  • Clearly communicate the performance requirements and expectations of employees, contractors, and other parties engaged in activities on Berry’s properties
  • Design and manage operations to minimize environmental and human health impacts, and provide a workplace free of unmitigated safety hazards
  • Comply with all laws, rules, and regulations governing Berry’s activities
  • Recognize the importance of HS&E factors relative to economic factors
  • Provide appropriate resources and programs that support HS&E, which include our professional staff and employee training
  • Monitor, evaluate, and periodically report HS&E performance to the employees
  • Participate in programs designed to enhance HS&E knowledge and improve HS&E technology and standards

We pride ourselves in the success of our “Safety Leadership” culture because we firmly believe that every individual is a Safety Leader. Berry’s Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR), a measure of the number of recordable occupational injuries or illnesses per 200,000 work hours (i.e., per 100 full-time workers) per year, over time demonstrates our commitment of continued improvement and actively pursuit the integration of our Company Core Values into our HSE Programs.

Water Management

We believe that water is a valuable resource and we seek to use it responsibly. We produce the vast majority of the water we use in our operations as part of our operations. We treat and reuse water that is co-produced with oil and natural gas for a substantial portion of our needs in activities such as pressure management, steamflooding and well drilling, completion, and stimulation. We use water supplied from various local and regional sources, particularly for power plants and to support operations like steam injection in certain fields.

Berry is an original member and holds a board seat on Eastside Water Management Area in Kern County, CA, which aims to manage groundwater in a way that is sustainable and provides for agricultural, industrial and other beneficial uses. The stakeholders in this water management district include public entities such as Kern County, Kern Groundwater Authority, the State water board, water districts, and private entities including agricultural users and others.

Idle Well Plan

In California, an idle well is one that has not been used for two years or more and has not yet been properly plugged and abandoned. In 2019, new idle well regulations went into effect in California, which includes a comprehensive well testing regime to prevent leaks, a compliance schedule for testing or plugging and abandoning idle wells, the collection of data necessary to prioritize testing and sealing idle wells, requirements for a long-term idle well management plan, an engineering analysis for each well idled 15 years or longer, and requirements for active observation wells. We take our idle well management plan and associated responsibilities seriously and in some instances abandon wells earlier than required as part of our planned development in certain reservoirs.

Berry’s Commitment to Protecting Endangered Species
San Joaquin Valley

PDF
Brundage Canyon

PDF

Biodiversity Policies

Protecting and preventing harm to wildlife is a shared responsibility. Bry’s operations in some areas must coexist with threatened and endangered species, which is why we have adopted policies to protect against harm to threatened, endangered, or otherwise protected species or their habitats specifically, and to wildlife generally.

Bry staff also work regularly with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and other agencies concerned with the protection of habitats and wildlife as we strive to comply fully with federal and state laws and regulations designed to protect wildlife including the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the California Endangered Species Act, and others.