Glossary
Provided below are definitions for some of the words you may see on our site. Additional industry definitions can be found in the Centre for Energy and Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers glossaries.
| Abandonment* | Converting a drilled well to a condition that can be left indefinitely without further attention and will not damage freshwater supplies, potential petroleum reservoirs or the environment. At Cenovus, after all oil and gas has been produced, the well bore is secured and abandoned according to EUB requirements. |
| B | billion(s) |
| Baseline mapping | When conducting environmental assessments, we use baseline mapping as a means of assessing an entire region, including topography, infrastructure, vegetation, wildlife and fish habitat, protected areas and sacred sites, instead of looking only at a specific site. |
| bbls/d | barrel(s) of oil per day |
| bbls | barrel(s); common unit for measuring petroleum |
| bblw/d | barrels of water per day |
| Bcf | billion cubic feet (natural gas) |
| Bcfe | billion cubic feet equivalent |
| Bitumen | A heavy, viscous (thick, semi-solid) form of crude oil. |
| BOE | barrel of oil equivalent |
| BOE/d | barrels of oil equivalent per day |
| Btu or British thermal unit(s) | A measure of the energy required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. |
| Casing** | A series of tubular steel pipes joined by threads and couplings that lines the well bore to prevent water and rock from entering. |
| CEAA | Canadian Environmental Assessment Act |
| cfe | cubic feet equivalent |
| CFTC or U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission | The U.S. federal regulatory agency that regulate futures trading in all commodities. |
| CO2 or carbon dioxide** | A non-toxic gas produced from decaying materials, respiration of plant and animal life, and combustion of organic matter, including fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas produced by human activities. |
| Coke | The residual product of the condensation process in coking. |
| Coking | A thermal cracking process to break up large molecules into smaller ones by removing the carbon, which remains as a coke residue. |
| Completions** | The process by which a well is prepared to produce oil and gas, involving such steps as running and perforating the casing. |
| Crack spread (3-2-1 crack spread) | The difference between the value of 2/3 of a barrel of gasoline plus 1/3 barrel of diesel as compared to a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil. |
| d | day (e.g., bbl/d) |
| Downstream* | The refining and marketing sector of the petroleum industry. |
| DSU | Deferred share units |
| EBIT | earnings before interest and tax |
| EBITDA | earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization |
| EITF or Emerging Issues Task Force | An organization that holds public meetings in order to identify and resolve accounting issues. |
| ENGO | Environmental non-government organization |
| Environmental footprint | The company's impact on the environment, in terms of resource use, waste generation and changes to the physical environment. |
| EUB or Alberta Energy & Utilities Board | An independent, quasi-judicial agency of the Alberta government that regulates the development of the province's energy resources. |
| Farmout** | An arrangement whereby the owner of a lease assigns some portion (or all) of the lease to another company for drilling. |
| F&D | Finding and Development cost |
| Field* | The surface area above one or more underground petroleum pools sharing the same or related infrastructure. |
| Fracing or fracturing** | The practice of pumping special fluids down the well under high pressure; fracturing causes the formation to crack open, creating passages for the reservoir fluids to flow more easily into the well bore. |
| GAAP | generally accepted accounting principles |
| GDP or General Development Plans | A tool Cenovus uses to map out proposed multi-well programs to enable effective stakeholder input into program design and implementation. |
| GHG or greenhouse gases | Gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide. |
| GJ or gigajoule | 109 J; one billion joules |
| hydrocarbons | Compounds made up of only carbon and hydrogen. Fossil fuels are made up of hydrocarbons. |
| km | kilometre(s) |
| LIS or Low Impact Seismic | Exploration activity that uses thinner, winding and discontinuous corridors as a means of impeding predator movement and access to sensitive species of wildlife. It also minimizes fragmentation of the ecosystem. |
| m | metre(s) |
| M | thousand, thousands ($M — thousands of dollars) |
| m3 | cubic metres |
| m3/d | cubic metres per day |
| M&A | mergers and acquisitions |
| Mcf | thousand cubic feet |
| Mcf/d | thousand cubic feet per day |
| Mcfe | thousand cubic feet equivalent |
| Minimal disturbance practices | The term used to describe Cenovus's operational techniques and best practices that reduce disruption to wildlife and protect native prairie grasslands. |
| MM | million, millions (e.g., $2MM) |
| MMbbls | million barrels |
| MMBtu | million British thermal units |
| MMcf | million cubic feet |
| MMcf/d | million cubic feet per day |
| MMcfe | million cubic feet equivalent |
| MW | megawatt |
| MWh | megawatt hour |
| NCIB | Normal Course Issuer Bid |
| NEB or National Energy Board | The independent Canadian federal agency that regulates pipelines, energy development and trade. |
| NGO | Non-governmental organization |
| NOx | nitrogen oxide |
| NYMEX | New York Mercantile Exchange |
| NYSE | New York Stock Exchange |
| NWA or National Wildlife Area | A special native prairie grassland area that is home to more than 1,100 species of wildlife and vegetation near Suffield in Southern Alberta. Cenovus has been operating in the NWA for more than 30 years, using special minimal disturbance techniques to mitigate the impact of our activities. |
| ppm | parts per million |
| PPoA or Power Pool of Alberta | An independent, central, open-access pool that functions as a spot market, matching demand with the lowest supply to establish an hourly pool price. |
| Reclamation | The return of land to similar capability through decommissioning and recontouring, surface soil replacement and revegetation. Cenovus's reclamation activities may include soil replacement, decompacting and revegetation with species native to the original ecosystem. |
| Reserves** | Recoverable portion of resources available for use. |
| Resource play | Cenovus refers to resource plays as large, known sources of oil and gas trapped beneath the earth's surface. Resource plays can deliver profitable long-term production through the use of advanced technology and development that achieves economies of scale. A resource play can exist over a large areal expanse and/or thick vertical section of land and, in the past, could have been considered uneconomic or technically challenging to develop. |
| RFP | Request for Purchase |
| Right-of-way | Land used for the construction and operation of a pipeline or other oil and gas facility. |
| ROCE | return on capital employed |
| ROI | return on investment |
| S&P | Standard & Poor's |
| SAGD or Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage* | A method of extracting heavy oil or bitumen that involves drilling a pair of horizontal wells one above the other; one well is used for steam injection and the other for production. |
| SEDAR | System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval; the system used for electronically filing most securities related information with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities. |
| Shallow gas | Cenovus defines shallow gas as natural gas that is generated and accumulated within 185 metres of the earth's surface. |
| Solution gas* | Natural gas that is entrained with crude oil in underground reservoirs. When the oil comes to the surface, the gas expands and comes out of the solution. |
| SOX or Sarbanes-Oxley | Legislation to protect shareholders from fraudulent accounting and reporting practices. |
| Sweet gas** | Raw natural gas with a relatively low concentration of sulphur compounds, such as hydrogen sulphide. |
| Tcf | trillion cubic feet |
| Tcfe | trillion cubic feet equivalent |
| TJ or terajoules | 1012 J; a trillion joules |
| TSX | Toronto Stock Exchange (formerly known as TSE) |
| URP or Unbooked Resource Potential | Quantities of oil and gas on existing land holdings that are not yet classified as proved reserves, but which Cenovus believes may be moved into the proved reserves category and produced in the future. |
| WTI or West Texas Intermediate** | A 40 API light sweet crude based in Cushing, Oklahoma; one of the benchmark markers for oil. |
*CAPP
**CFE
