Responsible Asset Management

Responsible Asset Management

Committed to safe operations

When we operate our assets safely, reliably and with consideration for the environment, we contribute to the sustainable success of our employees, communities, customers and investors.

At Pembina, we take a lifecycle approach to managing our assets including planning, construction, operation, decommissioning and reclamation activities. We are committed to continuously improving our operations and seek to align our operating practices to leading standards.

Pembina's view of responsible asset management includes the following topic areas: Integrity Management, Spill Prevention & Mitigation, Waste & Water Management, Biodiversity & Land Use and Cyber Security.



Operating Management System 

Pembina is committed to operational excellence and one of the ways in which the Company delivers this is through its Operating Management System ("OMS"). Pembina's OMS governs aspects of Health & Safety and Responsible Asset Management Programs, and provides a consistent framework for the design, development, and implementation of a comprehensive suite of policies, programs, procedures, standards and tools that guide, govern and drive operating activities. The Pembina OMS also supports cyclical planning, implementation, review, and adjustment of operational activities.

As outlined below, Pembina's OMS is comprised of a number of individual programs intended to drive safety, reliability, efficiency, cost-effectiveness and the continuous improvement of the Company's operational performance. Pembina's Quality Assurance Program includes certain processes to systematically and independently verify that these individual programs are established and are working effectively.
 

PEMBINA'S COMMITMENT TO SAFE OPERATIONS

EMERGENCY & CONTINUITY MANAGEMENT FACTSHEET

Pembina is prepared to safely and effectively respond to emergency situations, related to or impacting our operations. To learn more about our Emergency Management Program, read our Emergency & Continuity Management Program Factsheet

Emergency Phone Number:
1-800-360-4706

Reporting a pipeline-related incident to Pembina's emergency phone number can help pinpoint its exact location, allowing for a faster response. 

Environmental Stewardship 

To learn more about how Pembina works to protect the environment, read our Commitment to Environment Factsheet

Maintaining the integrity of our energy infrastructure – pipelines, storage tanks, gas processing plants, NGL processing facilities and other associated facilities – is integral to the health and safety of the communities and environment in which we operate. We design, build and maintain our long-life assets by applying strict standards, and identifying and managing risks to support their ongoing integrity.

Pembina's pipeline and facility integrity management programs include several systems and processes designed to ensure proactive and transparent management of our pipelines and facilities. These programs fall under our Integrity Management Program  and incorporate industry best practices designed to meet or exceed regulatory requirements.

Our goal is to achieve enhanced safety, reliability and longevity throughout the lifecycle of our pipelines and facilities.

Learn more about our Asset Integrity Management Program.
Pembina's Damage Prevention and Public Awareness Programs are dedicated to worker safety, public safety, protection of the environment and the preservation of the integrity of the Company's infrastructure. These programs have been developed to meet or exceed the regulatory requirements for Damage Prevention and Awareness Programs in the areas Pembina operates.
 
Pembina’s Damage Prevention Program ensures the safety of those living and working near our assets through the development, implementation and management of robust control programs, effective surveillance and monitoring techniques, and the education of stakeholders and communities. The Damage Prevention Program mitigates the risk of external mechanical damage with safe ground disturbance education and supervision, pipeline crossing assessment, right-of-way patrol, land use and encroachment monitoring, and depth of cover management.
 
The Public Awareness Program defines and executes the ways in which we inform stakeholders about the presence of our assets in their communities, the steps required to prevent damage to the assets, and the role of those community stakeholders in recognizing, reporting, and responding to pipeline and facility emergencies.  

Learn more about our Damage Prevention Program.

Pembina is prepared to safely and effectively respond in the rare event of an emergency related to, or impacting, our operations. We have a dedicated Emergency Management team that plans and prepares our Emergency Management Program. The Emergency Management Program includes standards and processes to prepare our employees with up-to-date technology and techniques to keep communities and the environment safe. This includes:

 

  • Corporate and area-specific emergency management plans with a complete set of standards and processes to support the safety of the public, our workers and the environment;
  • Predetermined strategies and tactics for incident response;
  • Tailored responder training, including annual exercises and ongoing training; and
  • Specialized response equipment strategically placed within our operating areas.


Pembina’s EMP is made up of the following four core components:

 

  1. Prevention and Mitigation. Defines actions taken by Pembina to identify and reduce the risks of hazards before an emergency occurs.
  2. Preparedness. Ensures that Pembina has the capacity to respond effectively and rapidly when people, the environment, or property will be, or are, affected by hazards. Preparedness ensures that the necessary plans and resources are in place and practiced.
  3. Response. Defines the actions to be taken to minimize the impact on people, the environment or property, and the impacts to customers, with an emphasis on prevention of injury and loss of life.
  4. Recovery. Ensures actions taken following an emergency restore and repair infrastructure and services to the level of pre-emergency function. Recovery programs and activities should ensure that resources (personnel and assets) are replaced/replenished/debriefed and that the response is reviewed as part of a continuous improvement process.


Emergency Management Plans


Our Corporate Emergency Management Plan contains corporate-wide response priorities, practices and procedures to support our site-specific or area response plans. Area-specific plans are created for each area we operate in and their purpose is to aid, assist, direct and expedite the decisions and actions of company personnel, first responders, and contractors during an incident.


View our Emergency Management Plans on our Emergency Preparedness page.

Pembina's Security Management Program ("SMP") enables Pembina to conduct its activities and operations in a manner consistent with Pembina's commitment to: protecting people, the environment, information, and assets; complying with legal and regulatory requirements; and meeting or exceeding industry standards and best practices.

Pembina’s SMP ensures security threats and associated risks are identified and managed with appropriate mitigation and response procedures to minimize the impact of security incidents adversely affecting Pembina’s stakeholders, information, logical/physical infrastructure while ensuring compliance with applicable Company policies, security regulations and standards.

The SMP is a risk-based management system approach to managing security risk consisting of five concurrent and continuous functions—Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover.

Pembina is committed to protecting the confidentiality, integrity and availability of its information assets. These areas are of paramount importance to management, employees and contractors at the Company. Pembina believes that excellence in security management of its information assets is essential to the well-being of the Company. As such, Pembina is committed to identifying security risks and establishing appropriate programs and procedures to reduce these risks to an acceptable level, and to testing these programs and procedures to assess their effectiveness on a regular basis.

Environmental Management Program

Asset integrity and responsible asset management are critical to ensure the safe operation of our assets and protect our communities and the environment.

Our Operations team ensures our pipelines are operated safely and efficiently. Pembina employees at our control center in Alberta monitor our pipelines 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. Through our Asset Integrity Management Program (“IMP”), we use inspection technologies to detect corrosion and cracks in our pipelines.

Through our and Damage Prevention and Public Awareness program, we protect our pipelines against possible damage by third-party excavators or construction activity by working with municipal planners, contractors and landowners along our pipeline routes.
 
Pembina is committed to resource re-use, waste reduction, and recycling programs, to provide environmental and economic benefits.

The management of waste associated with Pembina's operations is mandated through regulation of energy pipeline systems, process facility operations, permits, and applications. Pembina's waste management activities are performed in compliance with jurisdictional requirements. In areas where those are not established, Pembina applies requirements that are consistent with our Waste Management Standard.
 
Pembina strives to reduce the use of water whenever possible and avoid potential impacts to water resources throughout construction, operational and reclamation activities.
 

Our Approach to Biodiversity and Land Use

Pembina is committed to land conservation and minimizing the impact of our operations on the environment through:

  • Stakeholder engagement
  • Environmental assessment and planning
  • Managing species of concern
  • Habitat restoration and enhancement

We strive to minimize our environmental impact during construction and operation of our assets by establishing baseline conditions prior to construction and applying mitigation measures to reduce the potential for impact throughout the full asset lifecycle.

Managing Our Impact on Biodiversity
Wildlife Management Plans are implemented across our operations to address risks to species of concern and to outline planned mitigations.

Where wildlife or sensitive habitat features are identified, Pembina uses a mitigation hierarchical approach to limit potential impact to the environment, as follows:

1. Avoidance: steps are taken to design facilities and pipelines in locations that avoid sensitive habitat or direct disturbance to wildlife. Examples include the placement pipelines or marine infrastructure outside of rare habitats, breeding grounds, or migration routes.

2. Minimization: where habitat or indirect disturbance cannot be avoided, measures are taken to reduce the duration, intensity and/or extent of impacts. Examples include timing restrictions to avoid breeding or nesting seasons or building wildlife corridors into project design.

3. Reclamation/restoration: the aim of restoration is to improve degraded or removed ecosystems following impacts that cannot be completely avoided or minimized. Restoration tries to return an area to the original ecosystem to support the plants and animals that were present before impacts.

4. Habitat enhancements/offsets: offsetting is a non-net loss or net-gain approach to compensate for any residual, adverse impacts after full implementation of the previous three steps of the mitigation hierarchy. Examples include undertaking fish habitat enhancement upstream of river crossings or undertaking land restoration/rehabilitation work on degraded lands outside of Pembina’s operating footprint.

We take a life cycle approach to land management and biodiversity and undertake a robust process to restore lands impacted across three phases of construction, operations and decommissioning.

When the time comes to abandon or decommission our facilities, we perform all abandonment and decommissioning activities according to regulation. Environmental assessments are completed in support of developing remediation and reclamation plans.

The end goal is to return our sites to a manner that ensures equivalent land capability, which is Pembina's obligation to our stakeholders from whom we have borrowed the land.

Each year, to manage environmental liability, Pembina invests in remediation and reclamation and in environmental assessment, planning, permitting and post-construction monitoring associated with the  capital projects.