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) program provides the framework to prevent and control serious incidents, such as spills or leaks that involve hazardous materials. The integrity of our process equipment is essential to maintain Company-wide safety, and by following our PSM system we apply strong design principles, engineering and operating practices.

We continue to work on the key elements of PSM — greater hazard awareness, competency training, incident investigation and implementation of lessons learned, management of change and technical audits — across our operations, improving our processes and performance through safety metrics and monitoring.

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. 

Read our 2020 sustainability report for more Process Safety Events and performance information.