Our two refineries, one in Edmonton and one in Montreal, account for 13% of total refining capacity in Canada. Downstream operations include a lubricants manufacturing facility in Mississauga, the largest producer of lubricant base stocks and other specialized products in Canada. Our marketing network has more than 1,300 retail service stations, over 230 commercial road transport locations and a robust bulk fuel sales network, selling 15% of all petroleum products in Canada in 2008.
Downstream operations is a mature business and, in many respects, also a highly regulated business. Our Edmonton and Montreal refineries, the Mississauga blending and packaging operations, and national warehouses for our lubricants business are ISO 9000 and ISO 14001 certified and comply with all relevant regulations and legislation. Additionally, our Mississauga operation is TS16964 certified.
Our key challenge over the next few years is to continue to work well within emerging environmental regulations and, specifically, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions regulations. Our refineries continue to quantify and reduce, as far as reasonably practicable, GHG emissions. The refineries and other parts of the business are continuously developing better processes to mitigate the impacts to air, water and land while working co-operatively with communities and regulators.
Water is an issue that cuts right through our Downstream operations value chain. In Central Canada, water for our operations is drawn from the Great Lakes and in Eastern Canada from the St. Lawrence River. In Western Canada, access to water is a growing concern; the pace of new developments in refining and upgrading is making water access more competitive. When we expanded our Edmonton refinery a few years ago, we responded to this concern by implementing a water recycling operation that allows us to draw the water required for our expansion capacity from city waste water, rather than draw fresh water from the North Saskatchewan River.Our Downstream operations have rigorous processes in place to meet stringent regulatory standards, particularly for discharge water quality. We expect more stringent standards for released water will emerge. In 2008, we assessed our water practices at rural retail facilities and reviewed our current management activities with respect to these facilities.
Safety of employees and contractors at all our facilities is of primary importance to our Downstream operations. In 2008, we reduced our total recordable injury frequency to 0.60, from 0.64 in 2007. This improvement is attributed to continued focus on our Zero -Harm mindset. The 2008 contractor injury rate improved 28% over 2007 which accounted for the overall improvement.
Ongoing efforts with contractors and Petro-Canada employees continue with stepped up awareness campaigns and Total Loss Management (TLM) initiatives. These initiatives include:• an improved corporate- wide risk assessment tool,“‘on-boarding”’ of personnel to include an effective safety component, and great efforts to progress the Contractor Engagement initiative. Building on the lessons from the tragic incident at Texas City and the Baker Panel Report, the Downstream led a company-wide initiative focused on reducing the risk of process safety incidents through enhancement of TLM standards and practices that ensure asset integrity at our facilities. The team has completed its 2008 mandated deliverables, which include: a new corporate management of change standard, process safety competency expectations, TLM audit protocol upgrades and event management system upgrades to capture, analyze and learn from process safety incidents. The focus this year will be on implementation and rigorous execution of the process safety management practices that were reinforced over the past year.
Stakeholder engagement has always been a significant priority for our Downstream operations. Through urban growth and expansion, facilities which may originally have been located in more remote areas are now located in the middle of busy communities. We recognize that our operations may have an impact on the well-being and comfort of those communities. Besides taking extra measures to reduce odours and noise levels, Petro-Canada has set up Community Liaison Committees at key sites close to residential communities to enable two-way dialogue and provide community members with an effective forum for voicing their concerns.
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