Enbridge Case Study: Best Practices for Capital Planning Excellence
The oil and gas industry is facing unprecedented levels of complexity and volatility. Low commodity prices, ageing assets, decarbonisation, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) commitments, digitalisation, and increased regulation are forcing companies to rethink their approach to capital planning.
Enbridge is a multinational pipeline company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In a recent webinar hosted by IQPC, experts from Copperleaf® and Enbridge discussed how capital planning excellence has enabled Enbridge to streamline operations and transform its decision-making processes to realise 15% more value from its investment portfolios and secure a 30% increase in maintenance capital spend.
Enbridge and Copperleaf began working together in early 2019 to implement the Copperleaf Decision Analytics Solution and Value Framework as part of an enterprise-wide asset management transformation.
“Copperleaf has developed an analytical decision-making methodology that assigns a quantified monetary value to all the drivers of any investment,” explained Julian Lambert, Copperleaf Senior Sales Director for the Middle East and Africa. He explained how the Copperleaf Value Framework enables organisations to compare dissimilar investments on a common economic scale and align investment decisions with business strategy. “The framework provides an enterprise-wide view of all of the value measures that support an organisation’s strategic goals, and value models to calculate how individual investments or projects will contribute to those goals.”
Carmen Benoit, Asset Management Strategy and Planning Manager at Enbridge, explained: “Designing the value framework with Copperleaf allowed us to expand the granularity of value assessments. We are able to understand in greater depth risks and threats to the business, compliance, asset renewal, particularly financial impacts like throughput or operating expenses, how obsolescence is impacting Enbridge, or how an innovation or automation investment impacts employee productivity or cyber security.”
When asked about the impact that external events such as the pandemic have on the capital plan, Carmen said that Enbridge is in a much better position to adapt and re-optimise plans as needed, while still being able to meet planned commitments.
With the energy transition approaching, Carmen explained that Enbridge needs to be able to assess and report on ESG-related investments alongside capital maintenance and asset renewal expenditures. “We need to rise above addressing issues on the fly and focus on a consistent approach to managing our assets through their lifecycle in a proactive and predictive way.”
By aligning different business units and creating an enterprise-wide understanding of value, Enbridge can evaluate vastly different capital investment opportunities—including linkages to net-zero and ESG goals, alongside financial targets. This has resulted in a more efficient, transparent, and repeatable capital planning process across the entire organisation. Carmen summarises the key benefits in the following video clip:
Watch the full webinar here.