The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) has released new figures tallying the total volume of bitumen emulsion recovered at the Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL) Primrose site in Cold Lake, Alta. The new total — 1,177 cubic metres or 1.1 million litres — is more than a third lower than previously reported amounts.

An earlier incident report from November 14, 2013, states more than 1,878 cubic metres of emulsion was recovered at the four separate release sites, where the mixture of bitumen and water had been leaking uncontrollably into the surrounding environment for several months without explanation. That's enough liquid to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool three-quarters of the way full.

CNRL's July 31, 2013, statement (pdf), released to investors just over one month after the leaks were reported to the AER, said that within the first month of cleanup, 1,000 cubic metres of bitumen emulsion had been collected.

Scientist Kevin Timoney, who's authored several reports on the CNRL leaks, said the reported figures just don't add up.

“The bottom line is, how do you go from essentially 1,900 cubic metres, which is what you get if you listen to the president of CNRL when he was talking in January, down to 1,177 cubic metres. How does that happen?" Timoney said. "And nobody has answered that."

Bob Curran, spokesperson for the AER, told DeSmog Canada the provincial regulator has no ownership of the volume amounts they report to the public and publishes figures given to them by CNRL without verification.

“Those numbers on that site are estimates. They are provided by the company. They are not confirmed AER numbers, nor have they ever been,” he said. “So if the company changes the estimate then we would change a number on the site, until such a time that we arrive at a final number. We haven’t done that in this case so those numbers continue to be estimates supplied by the company.”

Timoney said the U.S. regulator, the Environmental Protection Agency, would never rely on industry for that type of data. "They’d be out there gathering data and determining how much had been spilled and how much had been cleaned up," he said.

When pressed on the disparity between current reported figures and previously reported figures, CNRL spokesperson Zoe Addington said the difference was a matter of “reconciliation.”

CNRL has removed oil, processed water, fresh water, vegetation and soil from the site. Addington was unable to clarify if the decrease in recovered bitumen emulsion volumes was due to an increase in reports of removal of other materials, such as fresh water and vegetation.

A CNRL report states, “Numbers have changed since the last reporting period based on a reconciliation of volumes with the receiving facility.”

Timoney, an ecologist with Treeline Ecological Services who just released a new report this month called CNRL’s Persistent 2013-2014 Bitumen Releases near Cold Lake, Alberta: Facts, Unanswered Questions, and Implications (pdf), said he'd like to see the data.

"Reconciliation is a nice word, but show me the numbers," he said. "I’m a scientist so I really want to see how this comes about."

He said even the AER and CNRL's own figures at times don't match. In mid-January AER published the 1,177 cubic metre volume while CNRL was still posting 1,864 cubic metres.

"Since I can’t get on site and they won’t give me the raw data, I just really have to report what they say and point out when it doesn’t agree," Timoney said.

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. images show the continued seepage of bitumen to the surface at location 9-21, the site of a water body now partially drained.

As a scientist, Timoney finds the lack of transparency dangerous, especially to the regulatory process. 

"This is one of the problems with the whole regulatory system, because … AER just simply reports, apparently reports, what industry tells them. They don’t do any checking."

Reproducing industry figures in the name of public disclosure isn't much of a solution, he said. 

"I think the regulator has a responsibility to provide an accurate assessment of the company’s activities. So if the regulator is not verifying information, it’s just simply acting as a clearing house for information industry gives it, it’s not doing its job. It’s not acceptable."

He added: "It’s a problem that’s only gotten worse over the years, in the sense that now AER is basically a non-governmental entity. It’s funded by industry. It’s not an agent of the crown so we don’t have the same sort of access to information we would if they were a government agency. So the AER can basically do whatever it wants to do and the public doesn’t have any recourse. It’s unbelievable, really, when you think about it."

CNRL says cleanup is now complete at three of the terrestrial seepage sites. The final site, 9-21, located beneath a body of water that has since been partially drained, continues to seep bitumen.

According to Addington: “Seepage from the fissures has slowed to an almost imperceptible rate.” CNRL currently reports the rate of seepage for all sites at less than one cubic metre (1,000 litres) per month.

All images courtesy of CNRL.

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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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A scheduled 'integrity dig' on Enbridge's Line 21 or Norman Wells Pipeline has alerted the company to contaminated soil in two locations along the line, according to an Enbridge news release, raising concerns the aging line may be leaking along its 870 kilometre route.

"The pipeline was shut down as a precautionary measure until repair sleeves were installed," the release reads. "Further investigate is being conducted at each site."

At kilometre post 457 along the line, near Fort Simpson, roughly 30 cubic metres of hydrocarbon tainted soil were removed from the area. At kilometre post 391, near Wrigley, between 60 and 70 cubic metres of soil were quarantined, the approximate equivalent of 6 or 7 dump truck loads. Enbridge has not indicated the cause of the leaks at this point.

Wrigley, N.W.T. was the site of Enbridge's 2011 spill of an estimated 700 to 1500 barrels of oil into the environment, contaminating half a hectare of land. The company originally reported only four barrels had spilled from a pinhole-sized opening in the pipe.

The Norman Wells Pipeline runs between Norman Wells in the Northwest Territories to Zama, Alberta, carrying 39,400 barrels of oil per day.

Enbridge conducts "integrity digs" to perform visual inspections along pipeline routes. According to Enbridge "third-party excavation damage, worker error, corrosion (a chemical reaction between the environment and the pipeline steel that reduces the pipe wall thickness), and cracking or denting" are all features "known to require a repair in the past."

As Desmog recently covered, TransCanada, the company currently overseeing the construction of the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, may be laying pipe with defective welds. Photographs taken from inside the pipeline show daylight streaming in through faulty welds between segments of pipe. In May 2012, a TransCanada whistleblower revealed TransCanada's long history of substandard welding practices and failure to meet regulatory code.

Pipelines, for any variety of reasons, pose a risk to their surrounding environment. In the case of the Norman Wells Pipeline, it is still unclear how the integrity of the line was compromised.

From the Enbridge website:

In October British Columbia Environment Minister Terry Lake criticized Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipeline representatives for being "long on promises, short on solid evidence and action" when it comes to the company's promised 'world-class' land-based spill prevention, response and mitigation practices. Enbridge admittedly has no land-based spill prevention strategy prepared for the contentious Northern Gateway Pipeline, and will not until six months after the pipline has been approved. 

Under cross examination during the Joint Review panel hearings in Prince George, Enbridge was unable to explain how they would prevent or respond to land-based spills along the 1,172 km line which crosses 770 of British Columbia's watercourses. 

The company's current problems with the Norman Wells line serve as a timely reminder that pipelines, as Enbridge is willing to admit, remain vulnerable over time to deterioration and human error.

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On Friday, January 11, while Kim Henry was marching in Ottawa as part of the Idle No More Global Day of Action, the air surrounding her home was turning sour. A leak at the nearby Shell Corunna Refinery filled the Aamjiwnaang First Nation community with the smell of rotten eggs, a typical indicator of the presence of hydrogen sulfide.

Henry is the academic principal of the kindergarten at Aamjiwnaang Binoojiinyag Kino Maagewgamgoons, a daycare that sits in a green crescent not far from the St. Clair River, which separates Canada from Michigan. This area, stretching south from Sarnia toward Lake Eerie has come to be called the Chemical Valley for its 62 nearby large industrial facilities (on both the Canadian and American side of the boarder). Those plants released 131 million kilograms of pollutants in 2005 alone, according to a report from Ontario’s Ecojustice, a charitable organization that advocates for environmental human rights. 

At Henry’s daycare, daily alarm tests from the three nearby petrochemical plants serve as a reminder that life in the Chemical Valley means being aware from a very young age that disaster could strike any moment.

“It can get stressful for the kids sometimes,” she says. “Even though some of them are really little, they know that if they're not eating lunch then that's not a normal alarm.”

On January 11, there was no alarm, although the daycare’s staff and neighbours detected the strange scent around 11:40 am.

Ada Lockridge, a community activist who helped to found the Aamjiwnaang Environment Committee, says her neighbour described the smell as a “number 8 or number 9 on the stink scale.” The odour, “hit you in the face, made you fall down. It was a strong odour of gas, like you were working in the gas station.”

Corunna’s plant manager, Michele Harradence, told the Sarnia Observer that the leak was discovered around 1:45 pm. Daycare workers reported the smell to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment before 2 pm but official word that there was a shelter-in-place – an order to go indoors and shut off all air intake – did not reach the daycare until 3:30 pm, after the shelter-in-place had been called off.

Henry says that residents throughout the neighbourhood were already suffering from headaches. “Later on that night some people had taken their children to the emergency because of headaches and a little bit of nauseousness. Some people were saying that their skin was really irritated and they had almost hive-like skin irritation.”

Furnaces in the daycare had to be shut off over the weekend, and when they were turned back on Monday, the air that lingered in the ducts was still pungent with aftereffects of the leak.

At a heated community meeting on Tuesday, January 15, Shell announced that the problem had involved sour water containing mercaptan – a class of organic chemicals used in refining oil – and benzene from their flare system. They said that the leak was contained to the plant. Ontario Ministry of the Environment spokesperson Kate Jordan later confirmed the presence of hydrogen sulfide, which would account for the rotten egg smell.

Jordan says that officials performed an air quality check after the incident and found that pollutant levels “didn't show any areas of concern.” They expect a full plain language report from Shell within the next week, which the company has promised to share with the daycare.

To Henry and her colleagues, the delay between the leak and the official announcement put the children of the community at unacceptable risk. “They have a right to justice and protection and we feel like that was violated.”

Inspired by her experience in Ottawa, Henry and daycare supervisor Muriel Joseph-Plain decided they would hold a rally of their own. The teachers in the kindergarten prepared their students with lessons that drew on Doctor Seuss’ the Lorax and traditional First Nations teachings about the sanctity of air, water and land. On Wednesday, January 16, about 100 members of the community marched from the daycare carrying signs that called for greater respect of children’s right to clean air.

This is not the first time the people of Aamjiwnaang have stood up for themselves. In 2008, they formed a bucket brigade to test their own air quality and discovered high levels of chloromethane, benzene, chlorobenzene, ethylbenzene and isoprene.

In 2010, with the help of Ecojustice, Lockridge and her former neighbour Ron Plain filed a challenge alleging that the Ontario Ministry of Environment’s ongoing approval of pollution in Sarnia violates their basic human rights under sections 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Even if the community is unable to identify the specific contaminants from the leak, they may still have a case against Shell, according to Dr Elaine MacDonald, an environmental engineer who works with Ecojustice. Extremely strong odours such as those created by mercaptan and hydrogen sulfide are also considered a contaminant under Ontario law.

“We're hoping that this type of thing won't go unnoticed and that there'll be some enforcement action,” says MacDonald. “Even if this was an accident, it doesn't matter. There needs to be something to make sure that this doesn't happen again.”

MacDonald said that First Nations and poor communities are often treated as sacrifices to the petrochemical industry and this is undoubtedly the case for the Aamjiwnaang community.

“They've been there for hundreds and hundreds of years and these plants all popped up around their reserve,” she says. “The proximity of the plant to the reserve is quite stunning. They share property lines, basically. You'll have a refinery property line that backs on the very property of homes and community facilities like community schools, more so than you'll see in most places.”

Back at Aamjiwnaang Binoojiinyag Kino Maagewgamgoons, Shell has agreed to clean the daycare’s ventilation system and playground in light of the leak. But Henry believes that even this small concession would not have happened if the community hadn’t gathered together to demand a response.

“We need to have a better line of communication,” she says. “They need to contact us right away if there’s a shelter-in-place or any kind of emergency. They need to let us know sooner.”

Image Credit: From Ecojustice's Exposing Canada's Chemical Valley: An Investigation of Cumulative Air Pollution Emissions in the Sarnia, Ontario and Shell Canada.

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Companies responsible for two separate oil spills in Alberta failed to provide adequate oversight for their operations, according to federal government documents released by Environment Canada through Access to Information legislation.

The documents detail how Devon Canada and Gibson Energy violated environmental laws, including the federal Fisheries Act, when their operations cause two oil spills into fish-bearing waterways in 2010.

Gibson Energy, a midstream pipeline operator, spilled a few hundred litres of oil into an Edmonton creek after failing to properly abandon an unused pipeline. According to a warning letter issued to the company from Environment Canada, "Gibson Energy ULC made a business decision to keep the Kinder Morgan lateral full of crude oil and to not purge it with nitrogen."

The pipeline released a "brown foamy substance" into the waterway, indicating the pipeline suffered internal corrosion. "Based on information obtained, I have reason to believe Gibson Energy ULC was responsible for the release of a deleterious substance into (a creek) leading to the North Saskatchewan River and they were not duly diligent in preventing this release," wrote an Edmonton-based inspector and Environment Canada fisheries inspector, Deanna Cymbaluk.

Violations of this kind can encur a fine of up to $1 million or three years in prison in Canada. Similar infractions in the United States are often met with heavy fines and penalties levied against operators.

When Postmedia's Mike De Souza contacted Gibson Energy, communications manager Nicole Collard, refused to comment on the two-year old file, saying "we're not interested in participating in this." The Alberta regulator Energy Resources Conservation Board issued Gibson a "high-risk non-compliance" order for "improperly discontinuing/abandoning a pipeline."

An additional spill, of 350,000 litres, or the equivalent of 3,000 barrels of oil, occurred when a blowout could not be contained for 36 hours by Devon Canada, a major operator in the tar sands.

At the time Devon was conducting steam-assisted gravity drainage oil production, a process that uses steam to heat underground bitumen, allowing the viscous substance to more freely flow up a well-bore. The relatively new technique poses new operational challenges industry may not always be prepared for.

In this instance, Devon lost control of the procedure at its Jackfish facility after a combination of human error and damage cause by sand erosion caused a well failure. According to Environment Canada's Cymbaluk, Devon had "poorly documented protocols" and a "lack of planning for a well failure" at the time of the accident.

Tim Waters, manager of operations engineering at Devon told Postmedia "there were certain risk areas around the well-head and how the wells were operated that we didn't fully understand, quite honestly."

Devon is one of many tar sands operators hoping to improve their image through public relations campaigns. Recently Devon released a series of television commercials intended to highlight the company's environmental stewardship at its Jackfish facility.

Greenpeace's Keith Stewart suggests the commercials can't undo the industry's operational shortcomings: "When the oil industry's poster child for clean water can't stop a blow-out for 36 hours, it makes me wish we had stronger truth-in-advertising laws in this country."

Waters, however, maintains the commercials are accurate and demonstrate Devon's concern for the environment.

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