Environmental compliance

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 Operations Integrity Management System (OIMS) framework has comprehensive processes in place to ensure compliance. These include knowledge of regulatory requirements, compliance procedures and periodic testing and verification of compliance. Detailed environmental and regulatory compliance assessments are conducted at operating sites to assess performance against 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 regulator is immediately notified, the cause is investigated, and follow-up actions are developed and implemented to prevent reoccurrence.

Performance at a glance

Environmental regulatory incidents
There were 24 compliance incidents in 2010, compared with 49 compliance incidents in 2009. There were no enforcement actions during the year. Four of the incidents were related to SO2 and sulphur recovery exceedances at our Quirk Creek operations and two were related to boiler opacity exceedances at Sarnia refinery. Six of the 24 reported incidents were non-exceedance events that were administrative in nature.

What are we doing

Ensuring awareness of environmental regulations
We have well-established systems and programs to maintain awareness of regulatory requirements. Under OIMS, designated experts track each of our environmental requirements and are responsible for communicating regulatory changes to operations and execution teams. We also host training workshops and employee communication sessions, as needed, on significant changes to regulations.