Pipeline and Structure Integrity

Preventive and proactive work is key in maintaining a reliable pipeline system for our North American operations. Our team develops and implements risk-based mitigation and monitoring programs to ensure the reliability of our pipeline infrastructure.

As part of our Pipeline Integrity Management Strategy, the Asset Integrity Group undertook a major initiative in 2010 to conduct individual technical assessments of all 34,000 pipelines of our pipelines. Each pipeline was reviewed and categorized according to risk as high, medium or low with results captured in our database. Proactive initiatives have continued in 2011 with detailed internal audits of our high risk pipelines to confirm that appropriate mitigation and monitoring strategies are in place.

Canadian Natural’s Asset Integrity and Environment Groups continue to work together to execute aggressive pipeline abandonment and discontinuation programs in our conventional operations. The pipeline abandonment program complements the well abandonment plan and assists in reducing liability by decreasing inventories of inactive pipelines. Fifty per cent more pipelines were abandoned or discontinued in 2010 versus 2009, and the program planned for 2011 will be increased by 200%.