Spill prevention

Spills can result from unplanned releases of crude oil or other hydrocarbon products from facilities where petroleum products are produced, transported, stored or marketed. These can affect land and water and, ultimately, the community’s goodwill and support of our operations. 

Our approach

Our goal is to have zero spills to land or water. We are pursuing this in a number of ways, through:

• increasing spill awareness through training
• learning from past incidents
• upgrading key equipment
• carrying out inspection and surveillance programs

Performance at a glance

Oil and chemical spills (number of spills greater than one barrel)

What we are doing

Increasing spill awareness through training

Managers and field operators throughout our business participate in training and reporting systems that heighten the importance of spill prevention and identify opportunities for improvement.

Spill prevention continues to be a key focus of two major environmental leadership training initiatives that have involved more than 800 managers, supervisors and leaders throughout our organization since 2005. About 180 managers and supervisors received the training in 2009.

We are also promoting education and training in other ways, such as:

• introducing a new contractor stewardship program.  Building on a successful safety reporting initiative, the program requires contractors in our Upstream business to track and report environmental incidents, with a focus on spills, including diesel fuel and hydraulic oil lost from mobile equipment.
• distributing environmental alerts to field operators in our Upstream business. We are using the on-line bulletins to increase awareness on recent incidents, share lessons from investigations, and highlight corrective actions.

Learning from past incidents

We are carrying out an extensive analysis of past spills, looking at common causes and opportunities for improvement.  We have concluded that a significant number of spills are the result of human errors in planning and carrying out work activities. In response and as part of our “Operator Care” program, we have distributed a detailed information package promoting correct operating procedures to all field operators and contractors in the Upstream business. Lessons from significant incidents are also shared in the Downstream and Chemical business.

Upgrading key equipment

We take proactive measures to replace equipment in a timely and safe manner before leaks can occur. In 2009, our efforts were focused on a number of areas:

• replacing or reconfiguring piping to reduce the risk of spills at the Cold Lake operation. This was carried out after completing a comprehensive two-year assessment of piping inside plants and between plant vessels
• continuing a program to upgrade underground petroleum storage tank and line systems at retail service stations to further reduce the risk of spills. In 2009, we replaced underground storage tanks at seven service stations
• furthering a multi-year program at our Sarnia site to install water hold-and-treat systems to prevent releases to the St. Clair River
• continuing our emphasis on upgrading our piping and tankage at our refineries
• utilizing more rigorous risk assessments and evaluation of the integrity of our equipment

Carrying out pipeline inspection and surveillance programs

We employ a rigorous management program to maintain pipeline protection and integrity throughout our owned and operated pipelines in Canada. Advanced analysis methods are used to predict pipeline corrosion rates, and prevention programs are employed to mitigate potential corrosion. In addition, state-of-the-art in-line inspection technologies and ground and aerial surveillance are used to monitor pipeline integrity. We also have an ongoing program to excavate sections of pipe for inspection and repair. The data obtained from our in-line inspections is used to proactively repair sections of pipe before a failure occurs. In 2009, we completed 74 digs in our networks to inspect and repair pipe.