strategic issue of business

Company: Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers Size: Medium Industry: Oil and Gas Business Activity: Professional, scientific and technical activities Type of Entity: Not-for-profit Number of Employees: 25 to 500 Country: Canada Headquarters: Calgary Alberta Yearly Revenue: $1 million to $25 million Gender: Female Subject: Communications

ISSUE: WHAT ISSUE IS YOUR COMPANY DEALING WITH?

Transcript

Janet_Annesley_Issue: Can you describe an important issue that you had to resolve? 1 Hi I am Janet Annesley, I am the VP Communications for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. I am dealing with the issue that our communications outreach program has evolved to the point with some audiences that now I am seeking to target others, specifically in this case, our core supporters. We are learning how to do that right now and how we reach that audience to mobilize them to be more outspoken for our industry.

Janet_Annesley_Cause: What caused the issue and why was it important? 1 We have chosen to identify and reach out core supporters. We have done some research into that audience. We know that they skew towards the male although there is a definite group of entrepreneurial females in that mix. They tend to be less formally education. They work in business. Whether in businesses or as entrepreneurs. They tend to be geographically located in Alberta and in Ontario. They have specific voting patterns. Knowing that about them we are now looking into which channels to choose to target them with our message

Janet_Annesley_Q1: Can you tell us about yourself and your career path to date? My name is Janet Annesley. I am the Vice President of Communications for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. I have only been in this role for about a year and it is an exciting, challenging role. I am a true communications professional. In other words, I have a liberal arts background and then I discovered I had to get a job, so now I do communications and public relations in the oil and gas industry. So it is a bit of arts meets science. I am actually the third generation in my family to be doing public relations and communications for the resources sector. So I think as one can come by this profession honestly, I probably do. Janet_Annesley_Q2: Can you describe a typical workday for yourself? Well one of the things I love about working communications in oil and gas is there is no typical workday. Our industry is very technical and it is very large in terms of having the world’s largest companies. So we can be very bureaucratic and process driven at times but certainly in an externally focused job there is no typical day because anything could happen whether it is something that happened in government or the news media or the environmental community or with one of our member companies. There is always something new and different and to some degree we are responding to those issues. To a large degree we are working very hard to stay ahead of the curve and to understand what the public is thinking, what policymakers are thinking and how that affects our industry in terms of advising our members. So I wish I could say there was a typical workday but there is not and anybody who wants to get into this profession needs to be able to think pretty fast on their feet. Janet_Annesley_Q3: Can you describe your role in the organization? My role is Vice President of Communications and that can mean many things depending on the organization. Here it means that I am accountable for all of the organizations communication with its external stakeholders. That does not mean I do all of the communications. It means I help. In many cases it would be the policy type thinkers or the technical type thinkers. We try to define their message and try to refine what they are telling a stakeholder and actually put what we are trying to do into the stakeholders point of view in their perspective so that we can in many cases be understood. The other key thing that a communication lead does is bring external information into the organization. At CAPP I am very lucky that we are all out there every day but in many cases in formal research or public opinion or dialogue I am the one bringing in stakeholder feedback to not only the executive team here but our over 100 members in total. Janet_Annesley_Q4: What does good performance mean for you in your position? Good performance in in my kind of role is sometimes hard to quantify but I hope my boss knows it when he sees it and our members certainly know when they see it. It is staying ahead of the curve. It is being able to see in some degree around corners. It is being able to challenge industry executives with the new paradigm of thinking or new ways of looking at public issues and public discussion and as long as I can keep my members thinking and keep them engaged then I am performing well and that is the difference between working in the company and working in an association. Here typical leadership is not necessarily having the best financial performance, here leadership means actually keeping some of the best and brightest minds in the business industry in Canada engaged and keeping them thinking about solutions going forward. Janet_Annesley_Q5: What does your organization do? The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers represents over one hundred oil and gas companies in Canada, we represent about ninety percent of Canada’s upstream oil and gas production. We are about a one hundred and twenty billion dollar a year industry very large in many respects certainly for Canada we are about thirty percent of the Toronto Stock Exchange and about the largest single investor in this country. So our role is to find areas where our members need to have consensus be it on a policy issue or on the regulatory issue and often times increasingly on an environmental issue so that we can move not only our performance ahead together but we can actually speak with one voice to policymakers then hopefully provide solutions. A lot of people say that you sound like a lobbyist, telling our government what to do but in many cases if associations like CAPP did not exist you could imagine all the plurality of the voices trying to be heard. So we do a lot of the heavy lifting internally a lot of the analytical work as well as the policy work and the discussions so that our industry, where appropriate, can speak with one voice. Janet_Annesley_Q6: How is your organization structured? CAPP is organized into about five different departments. Communications is one, we have policy, environment, regulatory, and oil sands which is a department into itself. We now have a large operations team that has different areas of focus across Canada whether it be the offshore industry in Atlantic Canada or natural gas production in BC. We also have a huge markets and transportations team that looks at what markets we have for our products and how those products get to market. Most people go fill up their cars and they never really thought about how the gasoline or diesel fuel got there and exactly what it took to get there and that is what a lot of our analytical work does. The legacy of that is around how stakeholders look at our business so if we need to provide a lens on say pipelines and that is transportation group so we try to organize yourselves along the lines of how policy is set at the provincial and federal levels. Janet_Annesley_Q7: How does your organization make money? Associations are typically dependent on their members for support and CAPP is no different. So, we get our performance reviews pretty seriously and pretty straightforwardly once a year, whether or not our members chose to continue to be a part of CAPP. To be a part of CAPP they need to recognize the value that we bring and the value of being a larger entity, larger than themselves where appropriate. So our funding in not from government. We receive no government funding, 100% dependent on the license and the support from our members. Janet_Annesley_Q8: Who are the stakeholders of your organization? Well clearly the stakeholders to Canada’s oil and gas industry are many and they are incredibly varied. For the upstream oil and gas industry some of our largest stakeholders are the people who live around the producing areas so in Canada that tends to be Alberta, perhaps northern BC, Saskatchewan, but also increasingly as oil and gas exploration works towards the north and towards the offshore those people in those communities give us our license to operate by allowing us to come in and produce the resources and to trust us to do it safely. The other stakeholders of course we have the provincial and federal government who grant licenses the real capital L licenses to our member companies based on our ability to help grow the economy and provide jobs and ultimately provide energy to Canadians. We also have investors and of course the over half million employees from coast-to-coast who work in oil and gas so we have a huge number of stakeholders and some days you can really feel the pressure from their expectations. Janet_Annesley_Q9: Why is your organizaiton so successful? The Canadian petroleum industry is one of the most interesting industries in this country. Canada is an energy superpower, Canada not only has the second largest reserves of oil in the world but we are the second largest producer of natural gas. And in terms of the impact on this country it is far and it is wide. From coast-to-coast we deliver jobs we deliver whether it is heat to people’s homes or fuel to their cars. And clearly as Canadians have a very strong connection to the environment there is a need for us to do this all responsibly and for us to show that we can continue to develop these resources in an increasingly sustainable way I am not going to say it is a sustainable enterprise because it is not we are extractive industry. But the challenges we have in a world where energy demand is going to double by 2050 are huge and I like to think Canada’s oil and gas industry is a world leader we have a potential to be the world leader and it is one that we should not ever challenge or ever take lightly. Janet_Annesley_Q10: Can you describe the industry who members your organization represents? N Janet_Annesley_Q11: How is this industry changing? Canada’s oil and gas industry is one of the most dynamic industries in Canada. No doubt from the oil sands to shale gas our industry is pushing forward with new developments and innovations so that we can actually get more resources and bring more energy resources to market but more over do it in a way that is competitive. So our industry is one of the single largest investors in R&D so we are changing all the time technically. I love to see that our industries face is changing, I am the first female executive at CAPP and that is the start of something that is going to be a new trend as I look at the diversity that we have. We are not just the Cowboys from Alberta anymore. We are men and women from all stripes, all colors and all creeds so this industry is on the cutting-edge both technically and socially. We cannot forget that as Canadians we have a very strong role to show how oil and gas can be developed responsibly and I think we are changing and really understanding that delivery of the social license to operating is our fundamental objective. Janet_Annesley_Q12: What are some of the challenges facing companies operating in this industry? Oil and gas is definitely not short of challenges I cant think of any industry except for perhaps tobacco and banking that people tend not to like people tend not to like to be held hostage to have to put gas in the cars or buy heat and fuel for their homes when they feel that in many cases this is their resources. So I think in my role of vice president of communications some of the keenness challenge that we face is around getting people to understand what we do and why we do it and getting them to look at the industry not just as big oil or acme oil but look at it as every day Canadians just like them whether there in TV or telecommunications were delivering a needed product and service every day. So for me the fundamental acceptability challenge is one that we continue to struggle with and I am not optimistic or even naïve enough to think that we will, at any time, be loved by Canadians but we do need to be accepted by Canadians and have to earn that acceptance and earn that respect. Janet_Annesley_Q13: What are the opportunities that are presenting themselves to companies operating in this industry? The oil and gas industry has a lot of opportunity to validate itself in the hearts and in the minds of Canadians. We have a tremendous opportunity as Canadians and I feel very strongly that we cant if you will blow it. That we have the worlds second-largest reserves of oils we have got tremendous natural gas reserves and if you look on it the flipside our electricity in this country is developed about seventy five percent from hydro services. We have got the world’s largest reserves of uranium so as an energy superpower potentially as a green energy or a clean energy superpower. The opportunity to develop these resources and maximize the economic benefits for Canadians to maximize the skills of the technology developed Canada and finally to really show the world that we can be the leading country when it comes to responsible development in every way of energy resources. This is our opportunity and I do not think we can afford to blow it. Janet_Annesley_Q14: Where will the next technological innovations occur in the industry? Technical innovation is what the oil and gas sector does every day whether it is recognized or not. Some of that is what I call a Saskatchewan farmer view of innovation in the fields with the broken down tractor or a new way of getting something done it does not occur with in the lab with a guy in a white coat so often times it is not recognized as technology and innovation. But I think we have done a lot of that and where we are going to go next is not unlike other sectors. We are going to go into things like nanotechnology. A lot of chemical engineering occurred to date within my industry but we are going to go even further. We will find new and more innovative ways to not only lower costs of Canadian oil and gas production that makes us more competitive but we also find ways to do it in a more environmentally friendly manner. And as we look globally and see that the era of easy oil is practically over Canada has been developing some of these more difficult hydrocarbons for a long time and the new innovations that we will see will be almost solely based in that area in ways of doing that better, doing it in a way that is cheaper, in a way that is easier on the planet.