We continually look for ways to improve our environment, health and safety stewardship.

ENVIRONMENT, HEALTH AND SAFETY

Enerplus places a high priority on preserving the quality of our environment and protecting the health and safety of our employees, contractors and the public in the communities in which we live and work. We actively participate in industry-recognized programs at the highest possible levels in an effort to support continuous improvement.

Enerplus has once again received the Certificate of Recognition as part of the Partnership Program with Alberta Human Resources and the Workers' Compensation Board. This certificate is given to employers who develop health and safety management systems that meet established standards. We have maintained our COR through annual reviews and audits every three years since 2000. The second independent audit of our EHS management system was conducted in 2006 and received an impressive 95% score.

Our safety performance unfortunately declined in 2006. A total of eight employee recordable injury incidents were recorded this year, resulting in a lost time injury frequency rate of 0.53 per 200,000 man hours compared to 0 incidents per 200,000 man hours in 2005. In addition, our contractor lost-time injury frequency also increased from 0.46 per 200,000 man hours in 2005 to a rate of 0.97 per 200,000 man hours this year. While the majority of these incidents were of a lesser severity, we are nevertheless concerned about the higher level of incidents. We are working to improve our safety performance through increased awareness in the field, personalizing safety messages so they have a more profound impact on personal decisions, and increasing the accountability for safety throughout the organization.

Enerplus is committed to meeting our responsibilities to protect the environment through a variety of programs and actively monitoring our compliance with all regulators. We engage in the following activities:

• Participated in the Environment, Health and Safety Stewardship Program developed by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers at the highest level, platinum. Our participation requires our commitment to continuous improvement in our EHS management practices including sound planning and implementation, open communication and demonstrated performance, and a thorough external audit of our activities at least once every five years.
• Increased our spending on reclamation and site abandonment by more than 48% to $6.1 million. Site abandonment and reclamation occurs when areas are returned to their original site once operations have been completed. Our reclamation activities saw 36 reclamation certificates received with another 58 sites ready for review by Alberta Environment. This correlates to a 13% reduction in our total reclamation sites from 2005.
• Doubled our remediation spending in 2006 to $9.6 million and reduced our reportable spills by 18%. Remediation is the environmental clean-up of spills or issues, many of which are associated with older properties or changing regulations.
• Enhanced our pipeline integrity efforts and reduced pipeline failures by 13% year-over-year through our Pipeline Management Program and related activities. The Pipeline Management Program is designed to maintain the integrity of our underground pipelines through on-going risk assessment. In 2006, 90% of our 6,000 kilometres of pipeline were assessed with appropriate actions taken to identify future pipeline leaks or breaks.
• Increased the number of emergency response drills within Enerplus to prepare our staff in the case of an emergency.

Our 2007 activities and initiatives in the area of EHS include:

• Maintaining spending levels on abandonment and restoration activities
• Working to improve our safety performance through awareness in the field, personalizing safety messages so they have a more profound impact on personal decisions and increasing the accountability throughout our organization for safety.
• Evaluating our impact on the environment. With growing concern over global warming and modern man's impact on the environment, we are looking at additional ways we can minimize our footprint on the world.
• Evaluating and implementing options to increase safety presence and ownership of our safety programs at the field level.
• Expanding our efforts relating to employee and contractor safety compliance through enhanced safety orientations, awareness and training sessions.

Overall, we believe our environment, health and safety initiatives confirm our ongoing commitment to environmental stewardship and the health and safety of our employees, contractors and the general public in the communities in which we operate.