NEWS RELEASE

August 01, 2009

Acorn International is pleased to announce that three staff members have been selected to participate in the 2010 Society of Petroleum Engineers International Conference on Health, Safety and Environment in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. 

• Dean Slocum (Principal) was asked to join the environmental program committee. He has been an active SPE member in 6 consecutive biennial conferences over the past 10 years. For further details, visit the SPE Website.

• Heather Boyd (Consultant) and co-author Gonzalo Garcia (Chevron) , were selected to present their paper entitled, "Managing Social and Reputation Risk Through a Structured Hazard Identification Process". This paper presents a risk-based, standardized procedure for managing social and reputational risk among all business units of a major oil and gas company.

• Atma Khalsa (Consultant) was selected to present his paper entitled, "Beyond the License to Operate:  Value Creation in Social Investment Through More Effective Public-Private Partnerships." Based primarily on interviews with social investment practitioners in the oil and gas industry and government agencies, this paper will document the lessons learned from recent public-private development partnerships and highlight opportunities to create more sustainable projects in the future.

SPE is the premier industry organization of over 70,000 members supporting the technical interests of global oil and gas exploration and production activities. Acorn International is proud to be an active participant in SPE.

Acorn International, LLC is a professional consulting services company dedicated to delivering world-class, affordable EHSS assurance and straight-forward results for overseas development projects.  The company operates not through a traditional consulting services model but by providing structured tools and guidance to qualified host-country teams, maintaining a link with international clients and building capacity in the host-country team. Acorn delivers:

1.       Established teams of local country experts partnered with and directed by an expert in assuring world-class EHSS assessment and management performance standards are met

2.       Advice to international industry needing to build world-class EHSS programs

3.       Recruitment and oversight/management of partners and service providers (EHSS and other) overseas

Working with Acorn allows international industries to better manage the increasingly delicate balance between meeting corporate requirements for reliable, simplified service while satisfying host-country demands for maximum local content.