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Featured Articles
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Mar 2010
| Source: Oilweek Magazine
| | | Leading green
| | | Judy Fairburn and her team at Cenovus Energy are leading the upstream oil and gas industry into greener pastures
| | | by R.P. Stastny
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| You´ve just been ditched by your more-popular best friend at the school dance and now, while she´s shaking what she´s got on the gym floor to your favourite retro disco tune, "Stayin´ Alive," you´re left by the wall mulling over how to get in on the fun.
Welcome to life at Cenovus Energy.
As EnCana forges a bold new future as North America´s leading "fuel of choice" producer, Cenovus stares down the challenge of winning over the hearts and minds of investors and the general public with its interesting mix of assets: two oilsands operations (which, as part of Canadian oilsands industry, have taken a public-relations beating in recent years, most recently achieving environmental devil status at the Copenhagen talks); two refineries, which aren´t likely to help in this direction; but also, a world-renowned Weyburn enhanced oil recovery/carbon dioxide sequestration project; and substantial natural gas assets in southern Alberta-some 800 million standard cubic feet, which is more than Cenovus will ever need for its steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) oilsands operations.
It also inherits from EnCana an enviable list of environmental achievements in the oilsands. But clearly, more will be required. The old ways around sustainability, in fact, may have to be replaced by new ones.
"There are typically three models of dealing with the environment among our competitors," explains Jon Mitchell, Cenovus team lead for environmental policy. One model is a legal focus on compliance, which is largely liability driven. Another is a stand-alone approach to sustainability, which has to push for integration with the rest of the business. And the third is where environmental matters are part of health and safety, communications, and public relations, which tends to be somewhat stakeholder-driven.
"While each of those philosophies have merit, we think [sustainability] is a core function within the business that needs to be driven into a different part of the organizational structure," Mitchell says.
Driven higher up, that is. So Cenovus has promoted the environment to the same table as corporate business strategic planning. An altogether new position has been created and an executive skilled at bridging worlds that don´t always work together now fills it.
That person is a Judy Fairburn, the new company´s new executive vice-president of environment and strategic planning. A chemical engineer with a Master´s of Business Administration degree, Fairburn has enjoyed a diverse career. She has worked in the upstream sector, in refining, in the field, as well as in boardrooms as a lead in strategic planning. She has also done a stint with the federal government in Ottawa as a visiting executive in 2003 and 2004.
"I´m thrilled about this role," Fairburn says. "I´ve taken on a number of start-up roles in my career, roles that haven´t existed before, taking that white page and figuring out where we should end up."
And that destination, given the nature of oilsands development, is decades down the road. When oilsands producers start thinking about developing an asset, it´s a matter of 7 to 10 years before first oil. So it´s important to be able to think well ahead and try to anticipate what the world will look like.
For this, an integrated approach to business planning, environmental protection, development of technology, and public policy tends makes the most sense. It´s an approach endorsed by the latest best-practices literature. And it´s nothing short of making the environment a core value.
"This is not a communications exercise. This is about continuing to transform the business," Fairburn says.
Currently, her team consists of 35 people. Much of the work towards improving environmental performance depends on technology. A slide Fairburn likes to refer to when talking about Cenovus´s environmental aims shows the evolution of energy development in terms of inputs required to get energy out of the ground and into a usable product. At one end is the oil gusher of yesteryear, when it was just a matter of punching a hole in the right place and up from the ground came bubbling crude.
Moving through successive stages of increasingly energy-intensive extraction-waterflood, tertiary enhanced recovery, massive fracing, thermal stimulation, etc.-we come to oilsands development, where as much as one unit of energy is required to produce three units of energy.
"SAGD really does start to turn the corner on production performance," Fairburn says. "You´re getting higher recovery. You´re turning the corner with the amount of energy you´re putting into producing it. It´s a goal of ours to continue along this trajectory and continue to get recovery up while reducing the footprint. This is what is motivating us."
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