Oil and gas industry awards recognize leading environmental, social, safety performance

CALGARY, March 21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ - The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers tonight presented recognition awards to six upstream oil and natural gas companies for innovative projects demonstrating leading environmental, social, and health and safety performance.

"The Responsible Canadian Energy Awards is our means of recognizing leadership among our members in delivering environmental, social and health and safety performance," said Dave Collyer, CAPP's President. "These awards shine a light on successful projects, and the people working hard on them, to demonstrate and encourage continuous performance improvement."

CAPP's 2012 RCE Awards had 29 projects nominations with six companies receiving awards in five categories:

- Health and Safety Award
Shell Canada Limited - Scotford Tri-Partite Safety Leadership Initiative
Suncor Energy Inc. - Leading by metrics

- Social Performance Award
Devon Canada Corporation - Conklin gets a high school

- Environmental Performance Award
Statoil Canada - Scat dogs sniff out new answers for environmental performance in the oil sands

- President's Award
Canadian Natural Resources Limited - Septimus Electrification and Horizon Oil Sands Wildlife Management System

- Chair's Award
Quicksilver Resources Canada Inc. - Timber utilization in northeastern British Columbia

RCE is a CAPP program designed to assess and report the environmental, social and safety performance of Canada's oil and gas industry. RCE is also a mechanism for the industry to identify and share best practices and to award specific projects with measurable results.

"All 29 projects nominated are examples of exceptional achievement," Collyer said. "The combination of leading technology and innovation, along with the creativity and perseverance of these individuals and teams, helps to elevate our overall performance as an industry."

The RCE Awards are selected from the nominated projects by the RCE Advisory Group, which consists of external stakeholders from the landowner, investor, labour, environmental, business and academic communities. More than 600 people attended tonight's awards ceremony and keynote address by Alberta Premier Alison Redford.

CAPP's Responsible Canadian Energy program measures and reports on the Canadian oil and gas industry's environmental, social and health and safety performance in an annual report. For more information, please visit www.capp.ca/rce.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) represents companies, large and small, that explore for, develop and produce natural gas and crude oil throughout Canada. CAPP's member companies produce more than 90 per cent of Canada's natural gas and crude oil. CAPP's associate members provide a wide range of services that support the upstream crude oil and natural gas industry. Together CAPP's members and associate members are an important part of a national industry with revenues of about $100 billion-a-year. CAPP's mission is to enhance the economic sustainability of the Canadian upstream petroleum industry in a safe and environmentally and socially responsible manner, through constructive engagement and communication with governments, the public and stakeholders in the communities in which we operate.

Responsible Canadian Energy - 2012 Awards

Health and Safety Award
Suncor Energy Inc. and Shell Canada Limited

Shell - Scotford Tri-Partite Safety Leadership Initiative

The Scotford Tri-Partite Safety Leadership Initiative is a non-traditional collaboration of leaders representing Shell staff, contractors and building trades that operate at Shell's Scotford site in Fort Saskatchewan. This collaborative program draws upon the experiences and expertise of each group to develop a strong safety culture for everyone working at Scotford. By meeting as a group and developing actions to attain progressively this ideal safety culture, the initiative works to improve workplace safety for employees and contractors working at Scotford. The program is another way for Shell to strive toward reaching their goal zero safety objective. Leadership at all levels of operations play a crucial role in the development and implementation of necessary safety cultural change. The program has positively influenced the Scotford site and contributed to the overall reduction of recordable incidents at the site in 2011.

Suncor - Leading by metrics

Define the required metrics of a safe industrial operation. Refer that question to any senior management executive and the most likely response may provide reference to recordable incident frequency - a highly utilized lagging metric within the safety profession. Lost time injury and severity rates may also be acknowledged. This is the struggle for safety professionals. The success of the operations they support is most often determined by these lagging metrics and it reveals "how little they failed" over a 12-month period. Industry needs to alter its focus to the measurement of proactive efforts implemented on the frontline, which in turn prevent the lagging indicator events from occurring in the first place. In Situ Drilling, Completions and Logistics (DCL) within Suncor Energy began utilizing two leading metrics in 2009 to assist with the management of safe operations and began to curtail the reliance on lagging metrics as an indicator of success. These two leading metrics are called the Leading Indicator Safety Index (LISI) and the Leadership Safety Contacts Ratio (LSC®). The LISI provides a quantitative indicator of the completion of proactive safety efforts on the frontline in relation to occurring exposure hours, while the LSC® provides a reference to the extent of support that management provides field operations in the completion of these safety efforts. These two leading metrics have played an integral role within In Situ DCL's contractor safety management success over the past three years.

Social Performance Award
Devon Canada Corporation

Conklin gets a high school

With no high school in Conklin, Alberta, secondary school students needed to be relocated, housed and educated in Fort McMurray, a two-hour drive north. As a result of being removed from the family environment and associated support mechanisms, the majority of students struggled to realize success. In response, Devon brought community partners together - Northlands School Division, Sunchild E-Learning Program (deliverers of an innovative, on-line teaching model), Conklin school board and community leadership - and provided the financial and human resources and direct support needed to establish a high school in the community. The Conklin School opened its doors in 2010 and accepted its first 11 students that September. A year-and-a-half later, the majority of the students are still with the program. Without the high school, there would not be any students pursuing their diploma, but today the community is poised to deliver its first-ever graduating class in 2015.

Environmental Performance Award
Statoil Canada

Scat dogs sniff out new answers for environmental performance in the oil sands

Statoil has undertaken research to develop unique monitoring that can guide resource management and mitigate wildlife impacts. Natural disturbances and increased land use can exert stress on local caribou populations. Caribou numbers in Alberta's oil sands are believed to be declining during the past decade. In an effort to learn, share and contribute toward an improved knowledge base relating to stress on wildlife populations, Statoil executed a scat detection program using dogs to find and collect caribou, moose and wolf scat during three winters. The samples were used to assess habitat attributes, such as vegetation, land form and land use; diet, DNA-based measures of population abundance and hormone-based measures of psychological, reproductive and nutritional health. The study enables researchers to suggest new ways to manage the oil sands landscape and presents an innovative and non-intrusive method to monitor effectively the complex interactions between humans and wildlife.

President's Award
Canadian Natural Resources Limited

Septimus Electrification

Canadian Natural Resources Limited commissioned the Septimus Gas Processing Plant in the second quarter of 2010. Working with B.C. Hydro, the company installed a high-voltage transmission line to the site to power the plant's compressor motors. The compressors are equipped with variable frequency drives to reduce further energy usage by allowing them to run at less than full speed when appropriate. This project reduces emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen oxide within the project boundary by using grid electricity to drive the electric compressor motors as a substitute for natural gas-driven engines. As well, Canadian Natural installed LED yard lights for economic and environmental benefit. Due to the electrification of the Septimus plant, the equivalent of 31,542 tonnes of carbon dioxide and 77 tonnes of nitrogen oxide emissions were avoided in the first year of operation.

Horizon Oil Sands Wildlife Management System

Since 2009, Horizon Oil Sands has operated a leading-edge bird deterrent program to avoid mortalities related to the Horizon External Tailings Facility (ETF). The Merlin Detect and Deter system was deployed at the Horizon ETF; it employs technology originally developed for bird-aircraft strike prevention. Radar-controlled long-range acoustic devices and lasers prevent bird landings at night and in poor visibility conditions. The Merlin Detect and Deter system demonstrated 97.5 per cent effectiveness in responding to birds approaching the ETF. Wildlife access is restricted to the ETF through the removal of habitat, fence around the perimeter, increased wildlife monitoring and removal of wildlife. The system has proven effective with zero bird mortalities occurring in 2010 and 2011.

Chair's Award
Quicksilver Resources Canada Inc.

Timber utilization in northeastern British Columbia

While Quicksilver's timber utilization initiatives have been evolving over the past several years, at year-end 2011 Quicksilver, its stakeholders and First Nations in the Fort Nelson, Fort Liard and surrounding areas of northeastern British Columbia have forged relationships that now include business commitments, educational support and environmental recycling and protection. Supporting these relationships with timber-recycling initiatives that make sense to the people involved, Quicksilver's ongoing commitments to listen and talk with these stakeholders helps ensure these initiatives are relevant and meaningful. Initiatives include projects for rig-matting, pipeline construction materials for trench-filling/compaction, local-area cabin building and repairs, and wood working classes at a local school program sponsored by Quicksilver. Stakeholders engaged to date included Trans North Timber, Acho Dene Koe First Nation, Fort Nelson Forestry Roundtable, and the Echo Dene School. In total, these stakeholders reflect hundreds of individuals and community members.

SOURCE Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers