Performance overview: Environmental performance

What we said in 2008

Spills               

  • Continue to strengthen spill prevention by providing additional training, upgrading tanks and equipment, and increasing surveillance of pipelines

Air

  • Invest in emission controls at Sarnia and Dartmouth to further reduce SO2 and NOx emissions
  • Invest in additional SO2 reduction technology at the Cold Lake operation through the Nabiye project
  • Expand efforts in the Upstream business to identify and repair small leaks of fugitive emissions
  • Implement advanced optical imaging equipment in the Upstream to better detect and repair other fugitive emissions

Water

  • Pursue projects to further reduce freshwater use at Cold Lake
  • Research non-aqueous technologies to recover resource from oil sands
  • Work with industry to evaluate different ways to manage or reduce water withdrawn from the Athabasca River

Land

  • Invest in ongoing research of advanced land reclamation technologies.
  • Identify opportunities to reduce our land footprint in the Upstream business

What we did in 2009

Spills

  • Carried out extensive analysis of spills in Upstream business looking for common causes and opportunities for improvement
  • Continued a multi-year program at our Sarnia site to install hold and treat systems to prevent release in St. Clair River
  • Spent a further $7.5 million in 2009 on a program to upgrade underground petroleum storage tank and line systems at retail service stations to further reduce the risk of spills 

Air

  • Updated plans for the Cold Lake Nabiye expansion to decrease SO2 emissions and provincial greenhouse gas emissions
  • Invested in emissions controls to reduce SO2 and NOX emissions at Sarnia and Dartmouth refineries
  • Advanced use of optical imaging equipment to better detect and reduce fugitive emissions at our refineries and chemical plants

Water

  • As part of our water licence renewal at Cold Lake, identified operational changes to reduce freshwater use intensity by up to 30 percent
  • Sponsored the research of non-aqueous resource recovery technologies through the Centre of Oil Sands Innovation at the University of Alberta
  • Renewed a cooperative agreement involving major oil sands developers to preserve acceptable flow rates in the Athabasca River during low flow periods, in accordance with government requirements
  • Constructed additional facilities at Sarnia that will improve our capacity to capture and store water runoff during periods of high rainfall

Land

  • Updated our plans for the Cold Lake Nabiye expansion to reduce the surface footprint of new drilling pads by 40 percent
  • Developed design and operating strategies to reduce the size of the land required to set up and drill wells on our lease in the Horn River Basin in northeastern British Columbia
  • Commenced a research pilot on tailings dewatering at Natural Resources Canada’s CANMET research centre in Devon, Alberta

Biodiversity

  • Constructed a fish habitat lake at the Kearl oil sands site to replace aquatic habitat disturbed by initial mine and plant site development.

Overall

  • Invested $770 million in environmental and capital expenditures in 2009, spent primarily on emissions reductions at company owned facilities and Syncrude, remediation of idled facilities and operations, as well as on protection of fresh water near Imperial facilities.

What we plan to do

Spills, Air, Water and Land

  • Leverage our successful behaviour-based safety systems, such as LPSTM, to increase our awareness of and reduce tolerance to environmental risks
  • Further training across our manufacturing sites in Loss Prevention SystemTM  and Essentials of Environmental Excellence (EEE)
  • Continue to expand safe operations training for process leaders

Spills

  • Roll out an Operator Care awareness program across conventional operations to support spill prevention
  • Incorporate spill prevention training into site orientation for all workers and contractors and include spill performance and stewardship into contractor reviews

Water

  • Reduce freshwater use at Cold Lake as a result of Imperial's commitment to progress projects that, if successful, will reduce freshwater consumption up to 30 percent by 2015
  • Increase overall freshwater use efficiency at Cold Lake through the Nabiye expansion
  • Evaluate opportunities to reduce water use at the Strathcona refinery