Throughout ONEOK's 100-plus year history, our environmental stewardship and the safety and health of our employees, contractors and customers has been important. Our commitment begins at the top of the organization and permeates through all levels of the company.

Our Vision
We aspire to be a leader in protecting the environment, safety and health of our employees, contractors, customers and the public. The company’s Environment, Safety and Health Leadership (ESH) Committee provides a strategic platform to provide leadership and direction to environmental, safety and health, compliance and asset integrity programs, processes and management systems. These efforts will result in sustainable improvements in our ESH performance.

We strive for the safety and health of all: The well-being of our employees, customers, contract personnel and the public at large is paramount in all operations. Various tools including audits, metrics, policies and procedures, training and process improvement are being used to enhance and external comparisons.

Our performance in employee health and safety has caught the attention of monitoring agencies. This year the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recognized our Mont Belvieu, Texas, facility for achieving three years of excellence in worker health and safety. The facility was initially approved for OSHA's Star Voluntary Protection Program in December 2004 and was re-certified this July. In addition to an exemplary safety and health program, OSHA's review team found that the facility had a lost workday injury and illness rate 100 percent below the industry national average.

We are mindful of our impact on the environment: We take our responsibility for environmental stewardship seriously and have taken steps to minimize the impact of our operations on the environment. We have developed a greenhouse gas emissions inventory, are improving the operating efficiency of our various pipelines and gas processing facilities and are analyzing options for future energy investments that will further improve the environment.

We have and will continue to address greenhouse gas emissions. Direct greenhouse gas emissions for ONEOK and ONEOK Partners are currently estimated to be less than 6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent on an annual basis. We believe most of our facilities will fall well below the anticipated minimum-reporting-level standards being considered by the Environmental Protection Agency, which are due to be published in mid-2009.

ONEOK maintains an accurate accounting of "lost and unaccounted for" natural gas. Our annual "lost and unaccounted for" natural gas for ONEOK and ONEOK Partners – for all of our business, not just our pipelines – is less than 1 percent of total throughput. This achievement is the result of consistently focusing on operational best practices, such as asset integrity, emissions control, measurement, fuel usage and operational optimization.

We participate in the processing, transmission and distribution sectors of the Environmental Protection Agency's Natural Gas STAR Program to voluntarily reduce methane emissions. This program facilitates the sharing of best practices among industry companies. We have also voluntarily partnered with state agencies to advance improvements in leak detection. Going forward, we will continue to focus on methane loss reductions through the expanded implementation of best practices across our operations and will continue to analyze other options to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Other actions include using compressed natural gas vehicles in our fleet, subsidizing public transportation on ozone-alert days and installing high-efficiency lighting and heating-and-cooling systems in our buildings.