Our North American Natural Gas (NANG) business unit explores for and produces natural gas, crude oil and natural gas liquids in Western Canada and the U.S. Rockies. This business also markets natural gas in North America and is developing long-term supply opportunities in the Northwest Territories and Alaska.
Safety of our employees and contractors is a high priority for NANG. In 2008, our Total Recordable Injury Frequency (TRIF) decreased to 1.31, compared with 1.54 in 2007. Through the day-to-day commitment of our leaders and workforce to a Zero-Harm work environment, we experience improvements in our performance. To this end, our Wilson Creek gas plant celebrated a significant safety milestone in 2008 with almost no lost-time accidents since the start-up of the facility in 1969. This achievement exemplifies Petro-Canada’s strong safety culture and the commitment of its front-line employees.
Water is a growing concern in Western Canada. A transition to unconventional gas plays, particularly developing coal bed methane and tight gas in the U.S. Rockies, has brought challenges in dealing with produced water. We have responded with innovative techniques, and Petro-Canada is among the first to successfully use reverse osmosis technology to treat produced water for natural gas production.
Regulators and other stakeholders expect us to effectively manage our environmental footprint. Some of our operations are located in sensitive ecological areas, where stakeholders have concerns about the impact of seismic activity, roads, well sites and pipelines. In conjunction with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), we have led initiatives to establish best practices for low-impact seismic lines, road planning around environmentally sensitive areas and use of winter conditions to accommodate travel to sites. Each of our projects undergoes an extensive review of environmental sensitivities and constraints, and Petro-Canada’s Life-Cycle Value Assessment tool is used to enhance decision-making. We use a landscape modelling approach to situate facilities and corridors where they will have the least impact that is reasonably practical. A key challenge in NANG is the number of relatively short-life wells. NANG has initiated a program to manage and remediate old well sites, which has been recognized as a success through a CAPP award in 2008.
Being a good neighbour in the community is the right thing to do and is critical to NANG’s ongoing success. In many ways, NANG pioneered our approach to stakeholder engagement at Petro-Canada. As operator of 429 facilities and a joint venture partner in 283 facilities, we are a neighbour to landowners and communities across a broad region. We also began a consultation process in November 2008 for our proposed Sullivan gas field project. Recognizing that not all stakeholders could attend regulatory hearings, we launched a new social media tool — the Sullivan Field Notes blog, to attempt to reach parties affected by and interested in the project.
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