Oil Sands Leadership Initiative

We are a strong industry advocate for sharing best practices and promoting these practices so they become the industry standard. As an example of this, in 2008 we began working with four other energy companies to make substantial progress on our environmental, social and economic performance in producing the oil sands. ConocoPhillips Canada is a founding member of the Oil Sands Leadership Initiative . The Oil Sands Leadership Initiative is a group of five progressive oil sands producers working together to create a step-change in the industry’s environmental performance. Other member companies include Nexen Inc., Suncor Energy, Statoil and Total E&P Canada. Provincial government personnel participate as both observers and advisors in the Oil Sands Leadership Initiative sub-committees. This group is the only group of its kind in the oil sands industry.

The Oil Sands Leadership Initiative is structured around four key issues that are critical to the member companies and the communities in which they operate. On April 16, 2010 the five member companies signed a charter, formally creating the Oil Sands Leadership Initiative. The member companies are committed to improving oil sands industry reputation by demonstrating and communicating environmental, social and economic performance and technological advancements.

It is structured as four related working groups that are overseen by a coordinating committee and a steering committee. The working groups collaborate to progress a series of initiatives, improving best practices and accelerating progress in these key areas:

• Water management
• Land stewardship
• Sustainable communities
• Technology breakthrough

Though the Oil Sands Leadership Initiative is still in its early days, it is a promising opportunity to accelerate our performance.

Oil Sands Technology Development

ConocoPhillips Canada believes technology is an important part of ensuring sustainable oil sands development. We plan to spend more than $300 million over the next five years on heavy oil technology, a significant portion of which will be dedicated to managing the environmental impacts associated with oil sands development.

Our technology program is focused on four key areas:

• Managing greenhouse gases
• Minimizing water use
• Reducing land disturbance
• Improving project economics

To find out more, please visit our Technology and Innovation page on our website.

The steam-assisted gravity drainage process is relatively new technology. There is opportunity for building on its strong foundation and finding improvements and best practices. We are working on a number of technologies that span from incremental improvements to potential game-changers. These technologies are in various phases of development. Some are applicable to Surmont Phase 1, others are slated for Surmont Phase 2, and others will be applied to projects we have not yet designed and are perhaps two decades away from full-field implementation.

Applying new technologies takes time because of the long lead-time and significant financial investment involved in identifying, investigating, developing, pilot testing and implementing. For example, if we were to identify a potential new steam generation technology, it could take over 10 years to fully implement this technology in a project. It is important for us to envision our technology future now, continue to foster a culture of innovation in our company and actively source and evaluate promising and potential technology applications.

Each issue-related section on this site outlines some of the technology developments we are assessing and applying to current and future projects. In addition to the work we’re doing at ConocoPhillips Canada, we are tapping into other potential technology innovation through the Oil Sands Leadership Initiative’s Technology Breakthrough working group.