A pipeline owned by Paramount Resources Ltd. released an estimated 100,000 litres of crude oil and 190,000 litres of produced water near Zama City, in northwest Alberta, according to an April 11 incident report filed with the Alberta Energy Regulator.

The release was discovered after company personnel looked into a low-pressure alarm from the company’s leak detection system, the incident report states. The emergency status of the spill ended April 16.

The report says that although “the release was initially believed to be minor” further investigation shows the spill to be around 290,000 litres and has impacted an area of 200 metres by 200 metres.

“The pipeline was isolated and depressurized, and clean-up is underway,” the incident report states. “No reported impacts to wildlife.”

The cause of the spill is still under investigation, Paul Wykes, spokesperson with Paramount Resources, told DeSmog Canada.

The spill is located approximately 10 kilometres northeast of Zama City, Wykes said.

The remote pipeline is part of a network in the Zama area obtained by Paramount Resources when it acquired Apache Corp for $487 million in 2017.

Between May 2013 and January 2014 Apache’s pipeline infrastructure was plagued by a series of incidents that included one of the largest recent pipeline spills in North America.

In June 2013, a pipeline released 15.4 million litres of oil and toxic produced water into muskeg, contaminating a 42-hectare span of boreal forest.

Apache pipeline spill, June 2013. Photo: Apache Corp.

“Every plant and tree died” James Ahnassay, chief of the Dene Tha First Nation, told the Globe and Mail at the time.

The spill, which continued undetected for nearly one month, was originally reported to be only 9.5 million litres in volume due to an inaccurate meter reading, the company said.

Produced water can contain hydrocarbons, salt, metals, radioactive materials and chemicals uses in the oil extraction process.

An investigation later revealed the pipeline, which was only five years old at the time of the spill, cracked due to corrosion stress, caused by a pinhole leak. The company was later fined $16,500 for the spill and the Alberta Energy Regulator ordered a third-party audit of the company’s aging pipeline infrastructure.

Oil and gas exploration has been occurring in the Zama area since the 1950s.

In October 2013, Apache announced it had detected another pipeline leak after it had released an estimated 1.8 million litres of oil, chemicals and contaminated water over a three-week period.

In a statement of facts agreed to by Apache concerning the 1.8 million litre spill, the company admitted it failed to install protective fencing around the pipeline and that evidence indicated a bison may have rubbed up against the pipe, crushing it.

Two additional Apache spills occurred between 2013 and 2014, one smaller spill near Zama and one near Whitecourt, Alberta, which released nearly 2 million litres of produced water.

It was later determined Apache failed to install proper pressure valves on the pipeline near Whitecourt.

In 2016 Apache pled guilty to violations of the Pipeline Act and the Environmental Enhancement and Protection Act as was fined $350,000 by the Alberta Energy Regulator.  

In response to the April 11, 2018 spill, Paramount “immediately initiated its emergency response plan,” Wykes said.

“A team of personnel is on site as containment, clean-up and delineation efforts continue. There is no danger to the public,” he said.

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A week and a half after its discovery, Apache Corporation estimates that a toxic water leak from a pipeline has affected 42 hectares of land near Zama City in Northern Alberta. The spill released 9.5 million litres of what the company called “produced water” from its operations there, making it the tenth largest in the province since 1975.

Neither Apache nor Alberta Environment have spoken officially on the exact chemical content of the water.

However, the Dene Tha First Nation who has been trapping in the area since the 1950s report detection of “hydrocarbons, high levels of salt, sulphurous compounds, metals and naturally occurring radioactive materials, along with chemical solvents and additives used by the oil industry.”

No estimates have been released regarding the duration of the leak, although locals say the evidence shows it could have be present for "months" before it was detected on June 1st.

Chief James Ahnassay told The Globe and Mail “‘Every plant and tree died’ in the area touched by the spill.”

Apache spill from the air. Photo provided by Dene Tha to Globe and Mail reporter Nathan Vanderklippe and made available on twitter.

Images of the spill, released by the Dene Tha to Nathan Vanderklippe, show the high-oil content of the release. According to the ERCB roughly 2000 litres of oil were released in the 9.5 million gallon spill. 

The Hay-Zama Lakes have been designated an "Area of International Importance" since 1982, by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. Both lakes are connected by networked waterways.

The Dene Tha has provided the first photos of the affected area, which show wide swaths of brown evergreens and black swampy fields where once there was marshland. The area around Zama City is protected as a Wildland Provincial Park and is a critical habitat for migrating waterfowl and prized for its interlocking waterways, muskeg and wetlands noted for their biological diversity.

Although the leak was reported on June 1st, it was not acknowledged publicly until a week later when a local resident reported it to a newscaster. On Monday, a spokesperson from Alberta Environment said both they and the Energy Recourses Conservation Board had staff on the ground near the spill. But the agency refused to give any estimates about the size until today, saying they were still assessing the situation.

Globe and Mail reporter Nathan Vanderklippe, who has been persuing the story since at least June 10th, has received very little information from either Apache or the Alberta government. Although Apache noted the duration of the release is under investigation.

Q: How much spilled? A: "Don't have a volume. That's part of the investigation." Spill happened June 1, btw. #apachespill

— Nathan VanderKlippe (@nvanderklippe) June 10, 2013

Q: What spilled? A: Produced water. Q: Were they hydrocarbons? A: "Water sampling is being taken daily." But no answer. #apachespill

— Nathan VanderKlippe (@nvanderklippe) June 10, 2013

Q: What size of pipeline spilled, and how old was it? A: "I don't have a diameter or age." #apachespill

— Nathan VanderKlippe (@nvanderklippe) June 10, 2013

Q: How long was it spilling? A: "That's part of our investigation." #apachespill

— Nathan VanderKlippe (@nvanderklippe) June 10, 2013

Q: Does this area produce oil or gas? A: Both. #apachespill

— Nathan VanderKlippe (@nvanderklippe) June 10, 2013

Q: Has any of the leak made it to water? A: No. Q: Have there been any impacts to wildlife? A: "Not at this time." #apachespill

— Nathan VanderKlippe (@nvanderklippe) June 10, 2013

Dene Tha: "every plant and tree" touched by #apachespill is dead. Dene Tha also suspect waterfowl died, although Apache says they haven't.

— Nathan VanderKlippe (@nvanderklippe) June 12, 2013  

Greenpeace campaigner Mike Hudema is questioning the Alberta government’s motive in keeping quiet on the details of the spill:

“With a spill so large why did the Alberta government not report it to the public? Was the Redford government hoping that because of the remoteness of the area that they could just cover it up because no one would notice?”

This is a very chilling question because a yes answer means that Alberta has a government willing to go to almost any length to control it’s image regardless of the truth, the impacts on the environment or the public’s right to timely and accurate information.”

Apache characterizes its operations near Zama as using “a novel enhanced oil recovery method to produce oil from what were once thought to be exhausted wells.”

It is unclear whether this spill comes directly from their fracking operation or from another operation in the area.

Globe News reports there were “23,484 of produced water spills in Alberta between Jan. 1, 1975 and Feb. 4, 2013.”

Apache Corporation has had 949 spills in that time, 575 of which were produced water. None of the companies three media relations personnel were available for comment on this story.

Image Credit: Dene Tha

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Few details are available eleven days after a leak of “produced water” from a pipeline approximately 150 kilometers northwest of High Level Alberta.

Oil and gas exploration and production company Apache Corp. discovered the leak in their pipeline about 20 km north of Zama City during an airplane flyover and reported it to Alberta Environment on June 1st.

An updated press release from the company says that the water was spilled after the oil and gas had been removed. “The cause and volume of the spill remain under investigation.”

Greenpeace Canada Climate and Energy Campaigner Mike Hudema sees this delay in releasing detailed information as unacceptable. He points out that if it was spotted by airplane, the spill must be quite large, but says that representatives from Alberta Environment refuse even to estimate the size of the affected area. They also haven’t released photos.

“We’re eleven days after this event ended, apparently, and we still have no information from the province,” he says. “We don’t know how big the spill was. We don’t know how large the area was. We don’t know what chemicals were in the pipe. We don’t know how long the spill lasted. These are all details that should be easy to ascertain fairly quickly, and they’re still answers that the provincial government simply doesn’t know or won’t release.”

Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development spokesperson Jessica Potter says that although the agency has staff on the scene, the delay in the release of information is due to on-going assessments.

“The company did initiate protective actions such as blocking culvert drainage to restrict further movement of the affected water,” she says. “There’s ongoing monitoring of wetlands and water monitoring near the break.”

Oil and gas leaks have become commonplace occurrences amongst Alberta’s vast network on oil and gas pipelines. Last year Global News reported “28,666 crude oil spills in total, plus another 31,453 spills of just about any other substance you can think of putting in a pipeline—from salt water to liquid petroleum.”

The Zama City leak is not far from Rainbow Lake, which suffered a spill of 22,000 barrels of oil in May 2012.

In June 2012 a spill of more than 3000 of barrels of crude oil from a Plains Midstream pipeline sent residents near Red Deer, Alberta running from toxic fumes. The spill triggered a government safety report. Although it was completed in December, the public has yet to see the technical details, making promise of a public consultation process seem unlikely.

Earlier this year, a Suncor leak plant dumped 350,000 litres of wastewater into the Athabasca River over ten hours. At the time, a group including Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the Council of Canadians, First Nations, and Forest Ethics Advocacy sent a letter to Alberta Environment Minister Diana McQueen demanding an immediate release of information about the leak, including photos. 

This most recent spill's location makes independent observations difficult to carry out, but that doesn’t mitigate the environmental consequences. Though sparsely populated, the area surrounding Zama City is a marshy wetland that is a key habitat to many species of waterfowl. It also houses a number of wild bison.

Hudema connects the government’s lack of transparency in these situations to an ongoing “culture of silence” on the part of the province of Alberta when it comes to environmental issues.

“People deserve quick and truthful answers,” he says. “Who is the energy regulator trying to protect? Is the energy regulator trying to protect these companies? Or is the energy regulator trying to protect the communities and the environment?”

He questions whether their silence may relate to the ongoing debate about the Keystone XL pipeline, which has drawn international attention to the province’s oil and gas industry. “Is the public not getting the answers it deserves because the government is more interested in public relations than protecting the public and the environment?”

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