Environmental compliance
Our approach
Our operations must comply with numerous licences, permits, regulatory approvals and legislated requirements that establish operating standards and emission limits. We view compliance as a minimum essential to maintaining our public licence to operate and apply rigorous processes to meet all regulatory requirements.
Our OIMS framework has comprehensive processes in place to ensure compliance. These include knowledge of regulatory requirements and compliance procedures and periodic testing and verification of compliance. Detailed environmental compliance assessments are conducted at operating sites to compare performance with regulatory requirements and identify opportunities for improvement.
We take all cases of non-compliance seriously. In those instances where government requirements are not met, the cause is investigated, and follow-up actions are developed and implemented to prevent reoccurrence.
Performance at a glance
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| fines or penalties incurred during the year |
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| increase in environmental regulatory incidents to 42 from 34 in 2008, including administrative events |
Environmental regulatory incidents
There were 42 compliance notifications in 2009, compared with 34 compliance notifications in 2008. There were no enforcement actions during the year. Five incidents were due to boiler opacity exceedances at our Sarnia site. We had six SO2 exceedances at Strathcona refinery, Sarnia refinery and Quirk Creek gas plant. Twenty of the 42 reported incidents were non-exceedance events that were administrative in nature.