Page 8 - Suncor AR English

THE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Safety is a core value for us – in fact, it’s above all else. Operational excellence is about
Eliminating all workplace incidents is a goal relected
doing the right thing, the right
in our Journey to Zero safety program.

In 2013, we continued to reduce lost time injuries and way, every time – and I believe

recordable injury frequencies across the company during
it’s key to creating sustainable
a year of intense planned maintenance activity. However,
long-term shareholder value.
a fatality at our Oil Sands site in January 2014 was a sad
reminder that we can never let up on our journey towards

ensuring every employee goes home safely at the end of
We are also collaborating with industry peers through
the day.
Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA), a network

Suncor achieved step changes in both reliability and of 13 companies, on water, land, tailings and greenhouse
productivity in 2013. The commissioning of new hot gases. I irmly believe COSIA is the kind of collaboration

bitumen facilities allowed us to begin blending Firebag that’s needed to drive sustainability across our industry.
bitumen for direct shipment to market. This, in turn,

allowed us to ramp up bitumen production from our mine Capital Discipline

to feed the upgraders. The net result was an increase
Allocating capital in a way that creates value for every dollar
of approximately 40,000 bbls/d of bitumen production.
spent is another one of my top priorities – one I believe

We’ve also improved the reliability of our upgraders. is critical to the company’s future. This means focusing
on projects that deliver the best possible returns for
Following the planned spring maintenance in 2013,
we began to achieve daily upgrader utilization rates above shareholders and, just as important, knowing when to rein
in investments that no longer match our strategic objectives.
90%. Together with average utilization rates at our four
We did both in 2013.
reineries of 94% last year, it’s a clear indication that we’re
improving reliability across our operations. Thanks to Relatively low-risk, low-cost projects like our ongoing

ongoing process improvements, we’ve added over 4% to debottlenecking initiatives at Oil Sands are excellent
the nameplate capacity of our reineries in the past two years.
examples of delivering increased value. So, too, is the

rail ofloading investment we made in 2013 to allow our
With debottlenecking projects ongoing and no major Montreal reinery to receive more than 30,000 bbls/d of
turnaround maintenance at Oil Sands planned until 2016,
lower cost inland crude.
I’m conident Suncor is well-positioned for a lengthy run
of continued production growth.
Our decision not to proceed with the Voyageur upgrader

Operational excellence is not only about improving safety, project was another example of capital discipline. It allowed
us to deploy resources to other areas aimed at improving
reliability and production – it’s at the heart of becoming a
reliability, productivity and returns.
more sustainable energy company. Every barrel of water we
conserve and every emission we reduce at our operations We’ve also focused on our core assets and identiied those

means lower input costs while also supporting our social not meeting proitability thresholds. In 2013, we sold the
licence to operate and grow. Environmental integrity is remaining portion of our conventional natural gas business

directly linked to our long-term business success.
in Western Canada, part of a four-year divestment program
from which we received gross proceeds of $4.5 billion.
Technology and innovation are also key drivers of sustainable

energy development. It’s how we’ve cut per barrel From a capital spending perspective, 2013 expenditures
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at our mining operations came in under $6.4 billion, representing a reduction of

by more than half since 1990 and reduced our freshwater more than $900 million from our original budget. This is the
intake by more than 30% over the past six years. We’ve also third consecutive year we’ve delivered our capital program

used tailings reduction technology to accelerate reclamation while spending less than our budget.
and cancel plans for ive additional tailings ponds.
We continue to make progress in managing our operating

We continue to focus on achieving goals we have costs, yet more work needs to be done. We remain steadfast
announced for 2015 on water consumption, reclamation in our efforts to manage costs and are conident in our ability

of disturbed land, energy eficiency and air emissions. And, to reach guidance targets for 2014.
we’re in the process of drawing up an equally ambitious
Suncor’s strong balance sheet provides us with a signiicant
set of post-2015 performance goals.
degree of lexibility. We are well positioned to execute on

4 SUNCOR ENERGY INC. ANNUAL REPORT 2013