A draft version of a new investigative report released this week by Global Forest Watch and Treeline Ecological Research argues the series of underground leaks currently releasing a mixture of tar sands bitumen and water into a surrounding wetland and forest on the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range is related to a similar set of spills caused by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL) in-situ operations in 2009.

The cause of the 2009 seepage was never determined and details of an investigation by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), then called the Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB), weren’t made public until last year, four years after the initial incident.

The new report, called “CNRL’s Persistent 2013 Bitumen Releases Near Cold Lake, Alberta: Facts, Unanswered Questions, and Implications,” takes aim at the AER for allowing certain in-situ, or underground, tar sands extraction technologies to continue without adequately addressing “major unknowns.” The independent investigation reveals the AER continually fails to protect the public interest in relation to these spills and that both industry and government demonstrate 'dysfunction' in their lack of transparency with the public.

CNRL, the company responsible for both the 2009 and current leaks, uses a process called High Pressure Cyclic Steam Stimulation (HPCSS) to fracture underlying bedrock in order to extract bitumen under pressure. HPCSS uses extremely high pressures and temperatures to create underground fractures allowing for the migration of bitumen. According to the ERCB’s investigation of the 2009 incident, these underground fractures were offered as a potential explanation for the uncontrolled release of bitumen above ground.

Despite multiple investigations, regulators and industry were unable to definitively identify the cause of the 2009 incident. The new report’s two authors, Peter Lee and Dr. Kevin Timoney, suggest this lack of certainty makes the company’s continued operation in the area, and use of HPCSS technology, inexplicable.

“In light of the unquantified risks to the bitumen reservoir, groundwater, and the adjacent ecosystems, the decision by the ERCB to allow HPCSS to continue during and after the [2009] incident was unjustified by the available evidence,” the report states.

There are “spatial and temporal” reasons for believing the two incidents are related, claim the authors. An analysis of the time and locations of the seepage shows a consistent pattern of leaks, each migrating outwards from a central location where the 2009 incident occurred.

Although the causes of the incidents remain “unclear,” they write the seepage is “known to involve migration of bitumen emulsion through a network of vertical and horizontal fissures.”

A map of the affected areas in 2013 from the Global Forest Watch report.

“Due diligence dictates that all HPCSS operations should be suspended until major unknowns are addressed. If not, continued use of HPCSS may result in large and unpredictable costs, and those costs will not be borne by the energy companies but by future generations,” the report states.

Crystal Lameman, member of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation whose traditional territory the seepage is within, says the ongoing situation calls into question the role and ultimate purpose of the AER. “What is their job, really?” Lameman asks. “What is their job and what is their agenda?”

The AER’s role depends upon their ability to regulate industry, she says. “They are supposed to be monitoring them and ensuring they are following through with the proper protocols, policies and procedures,” she said.

Crystal Lameman of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation. Credit Emma Pullman.

Lameman says the AER’s inability to prevent multiple releases of bitumen into the environment is difficult to understand.

“Are they becoming deliberately ignorant to what industry is doing? Are they turning a blind eye? I guess I’m asking these questions because I can’t think of any other reason these thing like the CNRL spill can happen, or not be stopped, or reported at a quicker rate. It causes concern for me as someone who lives in a tar sands impacted community.”

For Lameman, the ongoing incident in Cold Lake is a part of a longer-running pattern.

“Since they’ve changed their name from the ERCB to the AER, I’ve seen nothing but a bad track record in the way they report, in the way they provide comment, the lack of expediting information to local First Nations people. What I’ve found is that we’re often the last ones to find out about these spills.”

The Global Forest Watch report also criticizes both the AER and CNRL for failing to communicate adequately with the media and the general public. The lack of information, says Lameman, leaves impacted communities guessing.

“What next? Are we going to find out that the spill from ’09 has been ongoing since ’09? And the AER, at that time the ERCB, didn’t tell us? Are we going to find out next that CNRL was pumping at higher pressures than they were supposed to?” she asked. The question of dangerously high injection pressures is a concern also raised by Timoney and Lee in the investigative report.

For Lameman, the events on CNRL’s site bring to light the inherent dangers of extracting bitumen deposits with in-situ technologies. “We’re putting our guards down when we believe the AER when it says that in-situ and SAGD are safer methods. How? How are these safe?” she asked. “The more spills that happen, [the AER] is proven otherwise.”

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Alberta's Energy Resource Conservation Board (ERCB), the agency in charge of regulating the province's energy resources, quietly released a new report on Friday afternoon finding that tar sands companies have "failed to meet their commitments" when it comes to dealing with the massive lakes of toxic sludge that are a by-product of their operations. 

You can download the full PDF version of the report here: ERCB Tailings Management Assessment Report.

The extraction and processing of tar sands oil creates a by-product called "tailings" that must be deposited in large holding "ponds" for further decontamination. These holding areas have become so great, they are more aptly described as large human-made lakes. In their project applications, tar sands companies must commit to converting these lakes into deposits that are suitable for reclamation – areas to be restored to their natural habitat (or a semblance of what they originally were). 

But tar sands companies are failing to follow through on their own reclamation commitments. According to the ERCB's report:

"In their project applications, operators had proposed to convert their tailings ponds into deposits suitable for reclamation. However, operators failed to meet their performance commitments. The volume of fluid tailings, and the area required to hold fluid tailings, continued to grow, and the reclamation of tailings ponds was further delayed." 

In 2009, the ERCB introduced a directive stating tar sands operators had to "slow the growing volumes of fluid tailings and the proliferation of tailings ponds."

The Alberta tar sands are growing at an accelerating rate, requiring more water and increasingly larger tailings ponds.

Two of the main goals of the directive lie at the heart of the long-term environmental, public health and human rights challenges the Alberta tar sands present:

1. "minimize and eventually eliminate the long-term storage of fluid tailing in the reclamation landscape," and;
2. "maximize intermediate process water recycling to increase energy efficiency and reduce fresh water import."  

In order to separate the tar from the sand, companies use massive amounts of fresh water and produce an estimated 206,000 liters of toxic waste a day. In 2011 alone, tar sands companies used over 170 million cubic meters of water – the equivalent of annual residential water use for 1.7 million Canadians. 

Existing tailings ponds cover 176 square kilometres (67 square miles) of area in Fort McMurray and are expected to grow.

That's a lot of water. And the ERCB says that while companies are helping themselves to fresh water – the majority of which comes from the Athabasca River – they are failing to meet their own commitments to decontaminate and recycle the water they have used. 

The Alberta government claims 80-95% of water used in tar sands operations is 'recycled,' meaning the water is used more than once (and made increasingly toxic) before it winds up in a tailings pond. According to oil sands experts, 95% of the total water used in tar sands surface mining ends up in these toxic tailings ponds.

Many communities rely on the waterways that run through and past the Northern Alberta tar sands operations, and these lakes of sludge are having an impact there as well.

Tailings ponds in Fort McMurray currently hold more than one billion litres of toxic tar sands waste. Government documents confirm the massive ponds are seeping into and contaminating local groundwater.

A recently uncovered Canadian government document confirms what many have suspected for years, that tailings are leaking from the tar sands operations into the groundwater. Another peer-reviewed scientific study published earlier this year found that lakes as far away as 100 km from tar sands operations are being contaminated. 

For communities living in Northern Alberta, many of them First Nations, this is as much an issue of access to fresh water as it is one of human rights and public health.

Lake Athabasca, pictured frozen here, lies at the foot of Fort Chipewyan, home of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. Residents fear the contamination of the lake and the affect tar sands toxins are having on local fish populations.

According to Alberta's department of health, First Nations living in the community of Fort Chipewyan, 200 kilometers downstream from the Alberta tar sands, have a higher than normal rate of rare and deadly cancers. 

Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, a tribe living downstream of the tar sands operations.

There is a lot at stake when it comes to tar sands companies living up to their commitments to decontaminate their toxic water. This latest report by the ERCB should serve as yet another string in a long line of wake up calls for the Alberta government. 

Image Credit: all photos by Kris Krug via flickr

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Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board has released its findings following the investigation of the Rainbow pipeline spill in April 2011, and the results highlight longstanding issues both with Alberta oil companies and the bodies that monitor them.

In a story reminiscent of the Enbridge 6B pipeline rupture that dumped 20,000 barrels of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010, the report outlines the sequence of events from the initial alarm to the final shutdown.

Abnormal operating conditions were first detected at 6:32 pm on April 28, 2011. No fewer than five leak detection alarms went off between 6:35 pm and 7:22 pm that evening, and the pipeline was shut down and restarted three times before the flow of oil was finally shut off for good at 2:50 am on April 29.

The ERCB attributes this failure to heed the alarms to “a bias toward inaction,” saying Plains Midstream Canada, the pipeline’s operator, prioritized the flow of oil over following their own safety procedures and failed to appreciate the impact a spill would have on the area and its residents.

During the investigation, the board tried to interview the operator in charge at the time of the spill, but the company informed investigators that the individual is no longer employed at Plains.

The report stated that the location of the breach contributed to the size of the spill, describing it as “very challenging” due to wet muskeg and thick forest, underscoring one of the primary concerns raised throughout the Enbridge Joint Review Panel hearings: the accessibility of the of the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline in the event of an accident.

Prior to restarting the pipeline, Plains was required to fulfill a number of conditions including: conduct weekly aerial monitoring of the pipeline; implement a new risk assessment procedure to be incorporated into all operational and procedural documents; and demonstrate that enhanced pipeline maintenance protocol, particularly backfill practices, be fully integrated into standard procedure.

Perhaps more difficult for Plains to fulfill is the requirement to “successfully communicate to all Plains staff that the organization will fully support a console operator’s decision to shut down a pipeline.”

In addition to chastising Plains Midstream Canada, the report illuminates the lax standard to which the company and the pipeline’s previous owner, Imperial Oil, have been held.

Melina Laboucan Massimo, a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace and a member of the Lubicon Cree First Nation whose traditional territory has been directly affected by the spill, criticized the Alberta government for failing to respond to numerous calls for consultation with environmental organizations and the public at large.

Greenpeace campaigner Melina Laboucan Massimo speaks with government officials at the scene of the spill in 2011. Photo: Greenpeace.ca

“The Energy Resources Conservation Board’s report is a damning indictment of pipeline safety in Alberta as yet another pipeline company has failed to protect Alberta’s environment and people and only received the lightest slap on the wrist,” she said in a statement Tuesday.

“This sends a message that pipeline companies can cut corners on safety, leaving our communities and our environment to pay the price.”

The Rainbow pipeline was originally licensed for crude oil in 1967, and Plains Midstream purchased it in 2008. The report points to an accumulation of failures spanning decades that led to the pumping of 28,000 barrels of sweet crude into the Peace River region of Northern Alberta.

The site of the rupture was one of nearly 100 segments to have been repaired over the lifetime of the pipeline, and this is not the first time repairs of this kind have failed.

As a result of the pipeline’s failure, 4.5 million litres of oil were released into the local wetlands, making this spill the worst ERCB had seen in over 30 years.

After the 2011 spill, the ERCB ordered Plains to conduct integrity digs on a total of 10 sites, and the company found cracks in the repair sleeves in all 10 cases.

The ECRB determined that Plains should have acquired all historical records of pipeline maintenance and failures upon taking over operations of the Rainbow pipeline in 2008, but even without those records, investigators said, Plains should have understood the risks involved in the aging infrastructure.

Further, had the company conducted proper inspections, it would have caught the cracks long before the spill occurred.

Inadequate training, supervision and communication also factored into the magnitude of the spill, the report noted, prompting the ERCB to require the company to complete a crisis communication audit as well as an emergency response exercise by the end of April.

No fines have been levied against Plains.

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