SM Energy Co

Corporate Responsibility and our Commitment to Sustainability

At SM Energy, we recognize that our stockholders trust us to conduct business in a responsible and ethical manner designed to protect our employees, contractors and neighbors, and the environments in which we operate, while supporting the communities where we live and work. We recognize that operating in this industry is a privilege, and we take that responsibility seriously. We seek to minimize risk to our communities and promote social, environmental, human and economic benefits, while continuously striving to be a good steward of natural resources. We believe we have earned a reputation of conducting our business in a manner that exemplifies these goals, and we work hard to preserve our reputation.

Among other efforts during 2024, we continued to advance sustainability initiatives and practices throughout the organization as well as identifying and testing certain technologies designed to improve environmental, health and safety performance. We met our publicly announced environmental targets of zero routine flaring and non-routine flaring of less than one percent of natural gas production from our legacy assets, advanced the use of modern technology to identify, monitor and improve our sustainability practices, including for methane emissions intensity reduction, recycled more than 38% of produced water in our Texas operations and prepared for recently released (but not effective) SEC rules related to climate change disclosures by building a central repository for reported data.

In addition to the initiatives discussed above, we have continued to include sustainability metrics in both our short-term and long-term incentive compensation plans in order to align executive pay outcomes with the interests of our stakeholders.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our stockholders and other stakeholders for sharing their valuable feedback and recognizing our successful efforts to implement this feedback into our business strategy, governance practices, executive compensation programs, and sustainability focus.