Regional Monitoring Programs and Ongoing Research

We belong to several industry groups whose mandates are to conduct regional monitoring of environmental impacts of oil sands development.

Oil Sands Developers Group and Regional Terrestrial Monitoring

We recently championed the initiation of a joint industry effort through the Oil Sands Developers Group to create an organization that would focus on regional terrestrial monitoring using the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Program as a model, as we feel this is a gap in the current regional monitoring system architecture.

University of Alberta – Integrated Landscape Management Research Chair

ConocoPhillips Canada supported the National Sciences Engineering Research Council of Canada, Alberta Chamber of Resources and University of Alberta Research Chair in Integrated Landscape Management for the past 10 years. The latter focused on a wide range of boreal forest ecosystems research projects aimed at understanding cumulative land impacts and studying mitigation measures.

This research demonstrates that our minimal impact seismic lines do not affect the home ranges of nesting migratory birds, such as the Ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapillus).

Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute

We are a strong supporter of the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute. Our support began during the Institute’s early "prototype phase" and continues into the current year with both financial and in-kind support of staff time for advocacy work. We supported a three-year program to have the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute collect data in the region of the Surmont Project. This information and other data the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute collected will complement the data we collected for our Environmental Impact Assessments of planned future oil sands projects. We are also assessing the applicability of using Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute products to fulfill our regulatory approval conditions for monitoring effects of our oil sands projects on local biodiversity. The Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute provides a very credible foundation to build other sub-regional (e.g. species at risk) or project-specific monitoring programs.

In 2009, the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute completed a report providing a preliminary assessment of the Status of Birds and Vascular Plants in Alberta's Lower Athabasca Planning Region.

Woodland Caribou – Athabasca Landscape Team

The Athabasca Landscape Team was established by the Alberta Caribou Committee in June 2008 and completed its work in April 2009. We were one of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers representatives on this technical team. Because the Athabasca oil sands deposit overlaps significantly with woodland caribou habitat, we believe it was important for us to contribute to work that aimed to develop solutions for managing this threatened species.

The Athabasca Landscape Team was asked to develop management options to recover and sustain boreal caribou in all populations in the Athabasca Landscape Team area, consistent with the provincial Woodland Caribou Recovery Plan (2013/14), but not to consider detailed technical, political or economic challenges. The team developed recommendations for herd recovery, which can be found on the Alberta Caribou Committee website.

The Athabasca Landscape Team submitted a management options report to the Alberta Caribou Committee that identified the need for a multi-pronged approach including:

• Designating large areas where caribou habitat is the priority through restricting future industrial development.
• Restoring functional habitat through aggressive and coordinated reclamation.
• Addressing caribou mortality through wolf numbers.
• Implementing enhanced best practices.

The Athabasca Landscape Team pointed to the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan process as the most effective way to address caribou recovery in the region. We look forward to working together with government and other stakeholders in developing this plan.

Biodiversity Offsets

We developed a draft Biodiversity Management Framework, which includes opportunities for applying biodiversity offsets. As a member company of the Oil Sands Leadership Initiative, we support the development of government policy for implementing biodiversity offsets (also know as conservation offsets in Alberta).

We have not purchased any offsets to date. We are building our experience in offset programs and will explore and pilot a variety of projects and initiatives, including a potential demonstration project.