Since its founding, the Group has assumed a leadership role by function as educator, facilitator, commenter, collaborator and innovator on natural resource issues, providing tools to individual companies to help them manage corporate-wide and site-specific liability and strategy and working to ensure sound public policies and best practices.

The Group operates with multiple objectives intended to support its member companies and the broad industrial community:

• To ensure sound policies, practices and precedents - by monitoring and assessing implementation of liability regimes and policy initiatives and engaging in discussion with all key decision-makers and stakeholders
• To facilitate coordination of industry-wide positions - including responses to legislative initiatives, public consultations, regulatory proposals, legal precedents, methodological approaches and more;
• To provide support, information and resources to member companies - via a sophisticated network of government and other contacts, including legal, scientific and economic experts, and an extensive database of information related to virtually all aspects of natural resource liability, management and asset optimization;
• To promote dialogue and practice exchange - within the industrial community and between industry and various stakeholder groups, including key governmental authorities;
• To function as the voice of business and industry on natural resource liability and management - via dialogue with the highest levels of government in the US, Europe and elsewhere, consultation with major business and industry associations worldwide and by participating in relevant government-sponsored meetings;
• To serve as resource to and catalyst for the industrial community - via the development of white papers, manuscripts and other documentation and convening specialty symposia, briefings, workshops. seminars and conference calls on key issues as they develop; and
• To undertake research and other activities - in order to advance these objectives and further the state-of-the-art.