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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 2007, our Total Recordable Injury Frequency (TRIF) increased to 1.54, compared with 1.42 in 2006, due mostly to the addition of select U.S. contractors to the TRIF calculation. In Western Canada, we made progress in reducing our contractor injury frequency. In 2007, we completed the roll out of our behaviour-based safety program to employees and contractors.
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, 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 modeling 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.
Being a good neighbour in the community is critical to NANG’s success. In many ways, NANG pioneered our approach to stakeholder engagement at Petro-Canada. As operator of 479 facilities and a joint venture partner in 287 facilities, we are a neighbour to landowners and communities across a broad region. In NANG, understanding and responding to the concerns of our neighbours and communities about our use of their land is as essential to our business as getting regulatory approvals.
The Company sees long-term potential for the development of Arctic Island natural resources discovered in the 1970s and 1980s. Looking to the future, a small team was formed to look at the feasibility of developing the Company’s assets in this region. As we build our northern resource base for long-term growth, we are conscious of the responsibility to do it right.
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