july 2009 issue
|
|
The 
Keyser File
An Environmentalist Goes Pipelining
She leads the association looking after the interests of pipeline companies. And those interests, says Dr. Brenda Kenny, P.Eng., include caring deeply about getting the job done properly, safely and as unobtrusively as possible
BY TOM KEYSER
Freelance Columnist
As the president of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, Brenda Kenny, P.Eng., promotes the interests of the country’s largest oil and gas transmission companies. Yet Dr. Kenny proudly calls herself an environmentalist.
If those two descriptors don’t jive with your preconceptions about pipelining, think again.
Dr. Kenny walks the talk — and drives it, too. In the family garage, you’ll find a gas-stingy Mini Cooper and a hybrid-electric Toyota Prius. She’s an avid hiker and cyclist who enjoys taking motorcycle vacations with her husband.
She also happens to believe that the companies she represents through CEPA are among the most environmentally conscientious players in the global energy business. Within the strict regulatory framework that governs their operations, they have to be.
“I don’t think they get enough credit for the effort they put into their environmental due diligence,” says Dr. Kenny. “Many people assume that corporations will cut corners where they can. But if you’re building a project valued at $8 billion, it doesn’t pay to cut corners. It does pay to address every conceivable problem and issue well in advance.”
How it Began
When you look at Dr. Kenny’s education, this pipelining environmentalist label makes even more sense. While an undergrad at Queen’s University, she specialized in metallurgic engineering because she enjoyed the science of failure analysis in metals.
But don’t expect to see her using an acetylene torch out on the pipeline.
“I can’t say I ever wanted to be a welder but I have a lot of respect for those folks,” she says with a grin. “I’m much better suited to finding out what went wrong and how to fix it.”
With her engineering degree in hand, Dr. Kenny landed her doctorate in sustainable development at the University of Calgary.
Her background serves her well. Risk management within the industry has become more of an exact science than it used to be. Long before a given pipeline proposal ever lands in front of regulators, biologists and engineers have swarmed over the right-of-way, examining everything from the winter habitats of mountain goats to gravel characteristics in creek beds and peak river flow.
As for safety, Dr. Kenny says: “Pipelines are by far the safest way to transport oil and gas. We’re proud of the record of Canadian companies.”
For those reasons, CEPA isn’t shy about expressing its frustration with lengthy delays in the approval process.
“Looking forward to the next 15 years, we’re going to need to add $80 billion worth of pipeline infrastructure, if you include the Alaska and Mackenzie projects,” Dr. Kenny points out. “Critical obstacles include the time taken getting regulatory decisions on major projects.
“We still see a lot of situations where regulators are not as timely as we think would be reasonable, in part because these are complicated questions — but we think this is the time to take a look at how these decisions are taken and to get them done in more timely fashion.”
A View From Both Sides
Dr. Kenny is uniquely qualified to comment on the regulation process. She spent numerous years with the National Energy Board, where her duties included leading multi-disciplinary teams in assessing exactly these sorts of major proposal.
That puts her in a position to assess the complexities from both sides of the fence.
She calls her job as front woman for CEPA “the solution-seeker.” She means it in the collaborative sense — she’s not out to do battle with regulators.
“I’m not here to put a spin on the issues,” Dr. Kenny says flatly. “We have different roles but we’re both here to make sure the systems we build are safe, reliable and environmentally sound. And when there are ways to do a more efficient job of that, all the stakeholders in a given project should work together to get it done.”
 |
SAFE TRANSMISSION |
|
|