Under new leadership appointed last week, Canada’s NationalEnergy Board is vowing to become more user-friendly and easier tounderstand at the same time as it grows busier.

Ken Vollman, a 53-year-old engineer raised on a Saskatchewanfarm and formed by gritty work in western oilfields, was candidabout challenges facing the agency when he was appointed its newchairman July 15 by Natural Resources Minister Ralph Goodale.

In an interview, Vollman reported that he and fellow members ofthe NEB came up with five priorities in talking about the futuresince Roland Priddle retired as chairman in January. The collegialapproach will be a hallmark of the new regime, Vollman said. Hesaid the board above all has to accept that it is operating in asteadily busier, more contentious Canada, as the oil and gasindustry becomes increasingly competitive, spreads to the Atlanticregion and deals with ever more public participation. Priority onewill be managing a “very high and unpredictable applicationsworkload.” A decade ago, Canada’s national energy watchdog averaged60-80 days of hearings per year. In 1997, NEB three-member panelsheld 180 days of hearings. The new chairman expects the workload tobe “slightly higher” this year. Running a close second on thepriority list will be efforts to “enhance the clarity andconsistency” of environmental assessments that the NEB has beenassigned to conduct under still-new Canadian legislation. Vollmandescribed the board’s task as piecing together two very differentprocesses of economic and environmental regulation in a way thatmakes sense and follows rules that improve on today’s earlyversion, which are “just not very clear.”

Priority number three will be improving Canadian publicconfidence in the safety of pipelines. Vollman observes that astring of NEB investigations have shown that, at leaststatistically, pipelines are becoming somewhat less prone tobreaking down. But, in a new phenomenon of the late-’90s forCanada, no NEB hearing on new facilities goes by without seriouspublic challenges from intervenors animated by media coverage ofspectacular explosions and fireballs. In a recent speech to a tradeconference in Calgary, Vollman told the industry to expect the NEBto become steadily more vigilant on safety standards and set atarget of zero pipeline accidents.

The board’s fourth priority will be to resume an interruptedseries of overview reports on Canadian energy resources andmarkets, also in answer to growing public demand. Last but notleast, Vollman is also vowing to make the NEB more accessible to aCanadian public that has made it plain it wants to be more engagedin board processes, especially when cases raise safety andenvironmental issues. A start was made in the NEB’s hearings onAlliance Pipeline Project, when residents of remote areas along theproposed route intervened and testified over live long-distancetelephone connections.

Canada’s federal energy minister called Vollman the “idealchoice” as successor to Priddle. The new chairman got his basictraining in industry as an engineer with Mobil Canada, largelyworking out in oil and gas fields rather than corporate offices foreight years as an engineering student then full-time employee. Hethen worked his way up the ranks of board staff, emerging asdirector-general of pipeline regulation before his appointment asan NEB member in 1988. He has chaired board panels in some of theboard’s biggest recent cases, including a marathon inquiry into SCC(stress-corrosion cracking) of pipelines and the hotly-contestedapprovals of the Sable Offshore Energy Project and allied Maritimes&amp Northeast Pipeline.

Gordon Jaremko, Calgary

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