Imperial Oil admits communications on Alberta toxic leak fell short, says cleanup is under way

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Imperial Oil Resources Ltd. IMO-T has admitted it didn’t do a good enough job of communicating to the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation that toxic oil sands tailings had been seeping for months from its Kearl project, and says it has made “significant progress” on cleaning up a separate spill of 5.3 million litres of industrial wastewater at the site.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said Monday in her first comments about the issue that the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) and oil companies that operate in the province must be “more pro-active” in their communications if and when environmental issues arise.

Water tainted with dangerous levels of arsenic, dissolved metals and hydrocarbons has been leaking off the Kearl project onto Crown lands since May. Then in February, a drainage pond at the site north of Fort McMurray, Alta., overflowed, spilling millions of litres of industrial wastewater laced with pollutants.

In a statement posted to Imperial Oil’s website on Monday, the company’s vice-president of upstream, Simon Younger, expressed his “deepest apologies” for the spill in February.

Mr. Younger said cleanup is “well advanced,” and the Calgary-based company is “taking all necessary steps to prevent this from happening again.”

Industrial leak at Imperial Oil site in Alberta highlights regulatory issues, experts say

Imperial Oil has not yet made public the cause of the spill, but Ms. Smith told media Monday that she was informed in a briefing that it was “human error.” Imperial told The Globe and Mail in an e-mail it is still working to determine the cause of the spill.

The oil company, energy regulator and Alberta government say monitoring indicates that water that spilled from the drainage pond did not enter any waterways, and that there have been no impacts to local drinking water sources.

However, the company doesn’t know how much of the toxic water has seeped into the environment since it first noticed the problem in May.

The seepage has so far resulted in a Sept. 2 non-compliance order from the AER for releasing industrial wastewater from the Kearl site to the surrounding watershed, and Feb. 6 environmental protection order (EPO) from the regulator.

As part of the EPO, Imperial Oil had until Feb. 10 to submit to the regulator a plan to assess any impacts to fish and wildlife, and rehabilitate habitat affected by the spill. It also had to detail a plan “for the humane euthanasia of impacted fish and wildlife.” The regulator and oil company said those plans have been submitted.

As for whether the incidents at Kearl have damaged the reputation of Alberta’s oil sector, Ms. Smith told media Monday that if Imperial Oil had been “radically transparent right from the very beginning,” then months of toxic tailings seepage into the environment and millions of litres of water spilling from a drainage pond might not have made headlines.

Ms. Smith was first briefed on the Kearl incidents on Friday, two days after The Globe published concerns from the nearby Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation about being kept in the dark until the spill last month. It criticized Imperial Oil and the AER, and threatened legal action.

Ms. Smith said she has since told the AER that issues like what happened at Kearl must be brought to her desk with a “thorough communications plan from both the Alberta Energy Regulator and the company.”

“I would hope that in future our energy sector is a lot more pro-active when these types of incidents occur,” she said.

“I know we all expect there to be zero problems, and I think that’s always the aspiration, but if there is a problem that occurs, then we will be ensuring that the players are forthcoming, forthright and make sure that the information gets out to those who need it.”

Imperial Oil said it plans to invite community leaders to visit Kearl “and will continue to be responsive in addressing questions and concerns from local Indigenous communities and municipalities in the area.”

The oil company said Monday that all affected surface ice and snow in the area of the February spill have been removed and safely disposed of, and it would work closely with the AER to certify the cleanup.

Kearl, much like similar oil sands operations, has a seepage interception system in place for its tailings area. Imperial Oil said Monday the continuing leak has occurred in shallow ground layers that aren’t protected by that system.

To rectify the issue, it is installing more monitoring and collection wells to expand the existing seepage interception system, and additional surface pumps to ensure water is returned to collection areas.

Imperial Oil said monitoring and sampling programs will also continue, and it will keep all stakeholders fully informed as its plans progress.