Cairn Oil & Gas Takes Green Steps To get Net-Zero Carbon Emissions

Cairn Oil & Gas, India’s largest private oil and gas exploration and production company and a unit of the Vedanta Group, is pleased to announce the signing of three separate Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with the state governments of Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh, as well as their district administrations, for biodiversity conservation through mass tree planting of 0.75 million trees. The carbon collected by the mass planting is comparable to the emissions required to power 4,500 Indian families.

The three Memorandums of Understanding account for 38% of the 2 million trees that Cairn has committed to planting by 2030. The collaborations are in line with Cairn’s ESG plan, which addresses the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Cairn will use the carbon trapped through these MoUs for internal carbon reduction.

The first Memorandum of Understanding was signed with the Rajasthan Forest Development Agency, Government of Rajasthan, to create a carbon sink by planting 0.35 million trees across 700 hectares of forest area in the Barmer district.

Cairn Oil & Gas

The second agreement was made with the Gujarat government to develop 60 hectares of mangrove forest in Suvali, which is located in Cairn’s offshore Cambay asset in Gujarat. The man-made mangrove project is expected to sequester 30,000 tonnes of CO2 each decade, greatly offsetting the Suvali activities’ carbon footprint.

The third Memorandum of Understanding was inked with the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department and district government to carry out biodiversity conservation programs in and around the Company’s Ravva offshore activities. By 2030, the initiative will have planted 0.3 million man-made mangroves.

“We, at Cairn Oil & Gas, Vedanta Limited, are committed to achieving our ESG goals by implementing sustainable initiatives across our operations,” stated Nick Walker, CEO of Cairn Oil & Gas. These Memorandums of Understanding with the Rajasthan Forest Development Agency, the Government of Gujarat, and the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department demonstrate our commitment to biodiversity protection and climate change mitigation. We are honored to work with these prestigious organizations and look forward to rigorously carrying out these projects, so favorably impacting the environment.

Cairn Oil & Gas has already established 1,644 acres of greenbelt across its operational territories, including 279 acres of mangroves along the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea beaches.

Many of these on-the-ground actions are intended to contribute to the company’s overarching ESG goal of “Transforming energy responsibly for securing India’s energy future” through the three pillars of Transforming the Planet, Transforming Communities, and Transforming the Workplace.