Our company is committed to helping meet the world's increasing demand for energy in a manner that safeguards our employees, preserves the environment and makes a positive impact on the communities where we operate. We strive each day to be a trusted energy partner to communities, employees, business partners, customers and investors through sustainable business practices, which we believe are essential to our license to operate.

Employee safety performance improved for the seventh consecutive year in 2011. Contractor safety performance deteriorated, driven primarily by significantly increased activity in our North Dakota operations. We took aggressive steps to address this challenge, resulting in marked improvements in safety performance by year end. We expect these improvements to continue and we are focused on regaining our trend of continuous improvement in safety.

With our rapid growth in unconventional energy resources, we took measures to assure the public about our approach to hydraulic fracturing. We registered as a voluntary user of the web-based FracFocus database, www.FracFocus.org, where we publicly disclose the chemical composition of drilling fluids.

While we are focused on preventing safety, health and environmental incidents, we recognize the importance of maintaining a high level of emergency response preparedness. As part of an effort to learn from the Macondo incident in the Gulf of Mexico, Hess carried out a comprehensive review of our emergency response preparations. We joined the Marine Well Containment Company and Helix Well Containment Group, giving us access to rapidly deployable state of the art containment response systems. In addition, Hess participated in industry working groups and task forces focusing on emergency preparedness and response capabilities in the United States and globally. At the same time, we confirmed the integrity of our deepwater drilling operating methods and adherence to worldwide drilling standards.

With respect to climate change, Hess has taken measures to assess, monitor and reduce our carbon footprint at existing and future operations. We made considerable progress toward our 2013 goal of a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions intensity based on a 2008 baseline. We decreased flaring from operations in Algeria and Equatorial Guinea by more than 50 percent during the past several years, achieving our flare reduction target ahead of schedule. Our climate change strategy also includes the purchase of certified renewable energy certificates equivalent to at least 10 percent of our annual net purchased electricity, along with the purchase of certified carbon offsets to ensure that the impact of our commercial air travel is carbon neutral. For the third consecutive year, Hess was included in the Carbon Disclosure Project's Global 500 and S&P 500 leadership indexes for the quality of our climate change disclosure.

Hess is an active supporter of several international multi-stakeholder frameworks that seek to protect the environment, promote transparency and advance human rights, including the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the United Nations Global Compact, the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights and the International Labour Organization's Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.

We are committed to effective stakeholder engagement and strategic social investments in our host communities that lead to sustainable and measurable improvements, especially in education and health. The first five year phase of our partnership in Equatorial Guinea to improve primary education is nearing completion. A second five-year program will launch in early 2012 and will focus on strengthening secondary education and vocational training. We will also continue efforts to support primary education. In North Dakota, we announced a five-year $25 million partnership with the state government to enhance secondary, higher and vocational education in order to better prepare students to succeed in the workforce. The company also supported activities in more than 20 countries in the areas of youth and community development, education and health.