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12 THE OAKVILLE BEAVER Friday, October 22, 1999 Oakville Refinery Recovers from Power Loss Friday, O ctober 15, 1999 Last Friday, the power was out in all of West Oakville. As a resident in the surrounding community, you may have suffered some inconveniences.You may have had to reset digital clocks and hoped the power came back on before food in the freezer thawed. N ow imagine losing power at a plant the size of ours.The challenges are enormous.We've recovered but we wanted to ensure that the community was aware of what happened and to answer some of your questions. W h at Happened: On Friday, O ctober 15th at approximately 10:40 am Petro-Canada's Oakville Refinery experienced a complete power outage. Electricity at the plant is supplied by Ontario/Oakville Hydro and the system is designed to provide the most reliable electricity possible on a 24 hour basis.There are two separate lines supplying power to the refinery so that if one fails the other should provide back-up supply. On Friday, even this dual system could not protect us from Hydro's problems at their Bronte electrical substation. Hydro continues to investigate the cause of this power interruption. As a result of the power outage all units at the Oakville Refinery were shutdown. W e worked hard and did our best to get our operations back to normal. The units were all brought down in a safe manner and there were no injuries at the plant. However, this power outage at our facility did impact the community, predominantly through the elevated flare during which time we undoubtedly inconvenienced and even annoyed our neighbours. In the process of bringing refinery units down safely, some refinery streams from our process units are directed to the elevated flare.This is a normal and safe part of the refinery shutdown process. However, the visual and sound effects from the flare can be very noticeable. O ur Next Steps: W e take pride in the relationships that we have built with the neighbours in our area and we apologize for the impact that this power outage has caused.There is a very active Community Advisory Committee that includes volunteer members from the community and Petro-Canada Management. Any community complaints received are thoroughly reviewed by this committee. O u r next steps include: | . Review the situation in detail with Hydro to avoid future occurrences. 2. Review of internal procedures to learn from these experiences and to improve our ability to to w ork with the Community Advisory Committee to address any neighbourhood concerns. respond to future unexpected situations such as power outages. 3. Continue T h a n k you fo r y o u r patience and understanding. ^ W e are c o m m itte d to being a responsible c o rp o ra te citizen and g o o d neighbour. E N V IR O N M E N TA L LIN E 1-800-667-3876 i