Safety and Environmental Protection
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Our commitment to safety and environmental protection encompasses:
- Protecting people and ensuring we comply with all applicable safety policies, requirements and commitments.
- Ensuring the fitness of our systems for energy distribution and delivery. Developing and operating strong and highly reliable systems is essential to enabling us to continue to execute on our strategic priorities, and reduce and avoid social and environmental risks and impacts.
- Preparing for and responding to emergencies in the most efficient and effective way possible such that we ensure safety and avoid social and environmental impacts, costs and displacement.
By doing everything we can in this area, we live up to our Safety value.
2017 Highlights
We are on Our Path to Zero incidents in which safety is everyone’s responsibility, leadership is accountable for safety performance, continuous improvement is required, hazards are controlled and our commitment to caring extends beyond the workday.
Ensuring Safe Workplaces for Employees and Contractors
To protect the safety of our workers, Enbridge has comprehensive policies, practices, systems and controls in place. We take a proactive approach to identifying and preventing safety issues, take immediate action when a safety issue is identified and continually look for ways to improve our safety performance.
The contractors and subcontractors we work with are our partners in safety, and we expect them to be leaders in safety. We diligently monitor our contractors’ performance to ensure potential risks from their work activities are efficiently managed and mitigated.
*2017 represents combined Spectra Energy and Enbridge data
In 2017, during the combination of Enbridge (ENB) and Spectra Energy (SE), our three-year average trend in Total Recordable Injury Frequency (TRIF) continued to improve and is well below the industry average of 1.0. In total, we had 95 recordable employee injuries, compared with 44 recordable injuries at Legacy Enbridge (ENB). This increase is due to the merger with Spectra Energy, which increased the number of employees.
Contractor injury rates have greatly improved on an annual basis, and the three-year average also continues to improve.
Maintaining the Fitness of our Systems and Detecting Leaks
Above all else, the safety and reliability of our operations remains our number one priority.
We constantly strive to make our operations safer because we believe that every incident can be prevented.
We invest significantly in the fitness of our systems and in leak detection. We continually inspect our pipelines and facilities for safety and reliability. We double check our performance, work to protect and enhance our pipelines and distribution systems, and continually seek to put in place additional layers of safety in everything we do—from planning and project construction to operations.
2017 Highlights
Baker Hughes, a GE company, has completed more than 400 pipeline inspections for Enbridge.
Smart Pigs, Safe Pipes
Enbridge focuses heavily on prevention to keep our crude oil pipeline network safe. In-line inspection (ILI) tools— or “smart pigs,” to use industry jargon—are highly complex pieces of equipment that move through our pipes and use advanced sensor technology to inspect pipe walls millimeter by millimeter, searching for dents, tiny imperfections, metal loss and corrosion.
These tools are essential to our aggressive program of prevention, and they offer pinpoint accuracy for features that may require follow-up maintenance.
Learn more about inline inspection technology and how we use it—including our partnerships to develop next-generation technology and leverage big data to make step change improvements in technological capability.
Emergency Preparedness & Response
In the event of an incident, we are prepared.
On our Path to Zero, we believe that all incidents can be prevented and that no release is acceptable. However, if an incident does occur, we are ready to respond safely and effectively in partnership with local first-response agencies and regional and national authorities.
Our commitment to safety is based on caring for employees, our contractors, the communities where we live and work, and the environment.
We maintain strong emergency preparedness and response systems. We regularly test and continuously improve our emergency response tactics and plans with local first responders and emergency management and government officials. We regularly review our emergency management programs across our businesses to ensure that they are functioning as intended and identify opportunities for continual improvement. In the event of an incident, our employees and contractors are well trained and equipped to ensure a safe, rapid and effective response.
2017 Highlights
Taking a Systematic, Rigorous Approach
Emergency preparedness and response requires a systematic approach to ensure that all hazards are identified and anticipated so that a response is rapid, effective and protective of workers, the public and the environment.
Enbridge has an incident management organizational structure that, depending on the nature and magnitude of the incident, can cover all levels of the organization—from the front-line worker to the executive leadership team—and can be activated immediately following an incident.
The Enbridge emergency management programs guide our efforts to be prepared for and respond to emergencies. These Emergency Management Programs are implemented at all of our business units, regularly reviewed by management and personnel, and periodically audited to ensure their continual improvement and proper functioning.
We have comprehensive emergency response plans that are regularly reviewed, audited, updated and tested.
Steve Panger, Fire Chief, Superior Fire Department in Superior, Wisconsin
"With the training and equipment we’ve received from Enbridge, and through the work we’re doing jointly with the Superior Petroleum Partners group and the Superior Fire Department, we are in a stronger position to respond to the type of emergencies that could occur in these industrial facilities. And by doing that, we’re providing greater safety to residents, workers and our firefighters."
Read more from Chief Panger in our 2017 Corporate Sustainability Report.
