Process Safety Management

We focus on the integrity of our process equipment across all of our operations as an essential part of ensuring safety company-wide. Canadian Natural’s Process Safety Management (PSM) framework provides an integrated and systematic approach that focuses on the prevention, mitigation of, response to and recovery from unplanned releases of process material. PSM integrates and aligns different components of our business — technical, maintenance, operational and organizational aspects, as well as leadership and competency, to prevent and manage potential risk to personnel, the environment and the facilities we operate.

We have a focused approach on the key elements of PSM — greater hazard awareness, competency training, incident investigation and implementation of lessons learned, management of change and technical audits — continues across our operations.

Canadian Natural follows the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) Process Safety Event Reporting Guide, and is an active member of CAPP’s PSM Committee to not only improve our corporate processes but also work with the upstream industry through shared learnings and best practices, including process safety metrics.

PSM programs

• Operational Risk Assessments (ORA) - Implemented across our operations, ORAs assess potential process safety concern to implement short-term mitigation controls (or temporary shut-ins) until a permanent solution is in place. This tool enables clear communications regarding risks and mitigation strategies. Experienced team members oversee and coordinate the process, driving methodical analysis and focused actions when required.
• Risk-based inspection (RBI) - RBIs focus on facilities and equipment condition, and also measure and rank the likelihood of failure and its consequences. RBI processes are embedded into our management programs and completed across our operations.
• Contractor alignment - We work to align Canadian Natural’s safety processes and practices with FPSOs’ management systems, including use of RBIs to identify and manage hazards to prevent failures.

Management of Change process

An effective Management of Change (MOC) process is a critical element of our PSM framework to ensure that planned changes to our facilities are reviewed by a cross-functional team prior to implementation. The team ensures that risks associated with the change are understood and mitigated prior to implementation. In 2018, Canadian Natural completed a major project to improve and harmonize our MOC process across our North America Exploration and Production (NA E&P) and Oil Sands Mining and Upgrading operations. A detailed training and rollout plan is scheduled to occur throughout 2019.

Managing risk

Across our operations, a Corporate Risk Matrix provides alignment to our teams to understand and manage impacts and common risk. We use a multi-disciplinary approach that includes safety, process safety, asset integrity and environmental aspects. This matrix allows us to understand risks, prioritize work and enhance our programs to prevent and reduce failures and incidents by minimizing the exposure to those risks.