Canada’s energy industry provides many benefits, coast to coast: jobs, innovation, collaboration, revenue generation, and more. Canadian natural gas and oil producers are world leaders when it comes to environmental performance, sustainability and innovation – but few Canadians are aware of the significant achievements that make this industry safer and more environmentally responsible every day. With its Energy Excellence Awards, the Daily Oil Bulletin (DOB) both recognizes these achievements and shares the stories behind them.
Together with corporate sponsors Fluor Canada, Spartan Controls, ARC Financial and others, June Warren Nichols (JWN, publisher of the DOB), recently rolled out the second annual Energy Excellence Awards. Even the awards program itself had to innovate in 2020, as a gala in-person event was not allowed under COVID-19 restrictions. Instead, award recipients were announced over a period of weeks beginning in May, and each announcement was accompanied by a podcast panel discussion about the recipient and the winning program, invention or service.
The DOB received close to 90 nominations in four broad awards categories: Project Execution Excellence; Innovation and Technology Excellence; Environmental Excellence; and Exporting Excellence. The nominees were further refined into 12 subcategories and were judged by a committee of industry leaders.
Excellence in action
Among the champions (see sidebar for the complete list) is Valence Natural Gas Solutions, which developed a method to replace high-cost, high-emissions diesel for tight oil and natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations with lower-emissions natural gas that otherwise would have been flared. Another recipient is Tourmaline Oil Corp. and its technology-driven reduction of fresh water consumption for hydraulic fracturing through recycling of flowback water. And Cenovus Energy Inc. was recognized for developing new approaches to restoring caribou habitat, including use of amphibious vehicles and construction equipment to access remote rehabilitation sites.
Stay tuned! Over the coming months Context: Energy Examined will dig deeper into the champions list to profile some of the award recipients.
