The Decibel - What we know about the Alberta oil sands leak

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

The ground and water near Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in northern Alberta has become a toxic mess. A nearby oil sands site, run by Imperial Oil, has leaked industrial waste into the hunting and fishing grounds of the Indigenous community.But the First Nation alleges Imperial Oil and the provincial regulators tasked with keeping the companies in line, hid the seriousness of the leak. Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation is only now learning of how badly their food and water could be contaminated. Energy reporter Emma Graney talks about who knew what when and how this major oil leak is destroying any trust between the public, regulators and oil sands companies.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

The news that these leaks have been ongoing for over nine months has caused a greater anxiety amongst our people. That's Chief Alan Adam of the Athabasca Chippewan First Nation. His community learned last month that, for almost a year before that, toxic water from a nearby oil sand project had been leaking into the environment. Chief Adam and the First Nation say that the company running the project, Imperial Oil, and Alberta's regulator never told them about the leak. We have land users in the area that hunt fish and have harvest animals that could have been exposed from these deadly toxins. Our people harvest food from the forests and the rivers adjacent to Curle Lake Project. Some of these foods have shared throughout our community.

We have been eating them for months, unaware of the potential danger. There are over a thousand people in this First Nation in northern Alberta. And when I say northern, think north of Fort McMurray. This imperial oil site is 70 kilometers past that town. When you look at major populations and major areas, if something like this was to happen, I assure you that the culprits would notify the public because of the danger and the risk to a large amount of people. But because we are small communities,

small First Nations living up north, we're not considered to be, how would you say, humans, I guess? Energy reporter Emma Graney is based in Calgary and has been covering Canada's oil industry since 2019. She's going to take us through what's happened here. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail.

Emma, it's great to have you back. Thank you so much for being here. Of course. Thanks for having me. So, Emma, we learned about this major leak only last week from the First Nation that's been affected by this, but it was Imperial Oil that first noticed the problem. So what's going on here? Can you take us through this? So in May last year, some workers from Imperial, from the Curl Oil Sands site, they were, I guess, doing some monitoring as they do, and they noticed just north of the Curl Oil Sands site. They were, I guess, doing some monitoring, as they do, and they noticed just north of the Curl Oil Sands lease, so that's on Crown Land and it's, you know,

just north of the actual project site, they reported seeing some standing water, and it was kind of orange, a bit weird looking, and it was on vegetation as well. So they at that point reported it to the Alberta Energy Regulator and the federal body as well that monitors this kind of thing, Environment Climate Change Canada. Actually, it's responsible for that.

So that was back in May and they let the First Nation know as well and said, look, we found some weird coloured water and that's all the First Nation heard from that point. Then we had Imperial Oil and the Alberta Energy Regulator had multiple meetings about what Imperial was going to do about this. In the meantime, Imperial did testing and they discovered that it was in fact definitely tailings water that was seeping out from a tailings pond and gathering it at a few separate spots on the north side of the lease. So not even just in one spot, you're saying there's actually multiple spots here.

Yeah, there are. Yeah. So this is on crown land. So this is public land. This is land where Indigenous communities exercise their treaty rights to hunt, to fish, to gather plants. And then later in the year, Imperial did confirm that it was basically toxic water. In September, the Alberta Energy Regulator went, okay, righto, here's your first noncompliance

order. So that basically them saying, you let water go where you shouldn't have let it go. So it's water out of a closed loop system is the kind of technical term, I suppose. We're saying discoloured water, but there's a lot of dangerous things in this water here. This is water with arsenic in it. It's got dissolved iron in it. It's got hydrocarbons in it, sulfates. This is not stuff that you want to go anywhere near. Okay, so we've been talking about water leaking from a tailings pond, Emma, but what exactly is that? What is a tailings pond? So they're basically massive industrial scale ponds. So this is kind of wastewater that has had a lot of industrial processes that it's been used.

It's the stuff that you kind of don't want to be letting go anywhere. So it's got a lot of arsenic, hydrocarbons, all that kind of jazz that you don't want to get anywhere near yourself. So basically, this is water that goes through its process, it's used in the system, and then they got to keep it. I just have to say, it's kind of mind boggling to me that this is the best solution we've come up with to put all these toxic materials, once the process is done, just in an open pond and let it sit there. That's kind of crazy. What's kind of interesting to note here as well is that back in 2007, when Imperial was doing,

applying basically for their application for the Curl oil sands site, this was actually noted as an issue. So where the tailings ponds built up on Curl is permeable land. And then this was in the joint federal provincial review of the site. And that panel, the joint federal provincial panel, turned around and said, yeah, there is actually a chance that water could seep from the tailings pond into the environment of the Curl oil sands site. But we reckon that Imperial is going to do this great, you know, technological thing and get it all up to speed and it won't be an issue. So here you go, you know, have your application. Off you go. Let's fast forward now to February when at the same site a drainage pond

actually overflowed, spilling 5.3 million litres of water, industrial wastewater, out into the environment. Whoa. Yeah, whoa is right. Industrial wastewater is not allowed to just flow out untreated into the environment. So that was in February. And at this point, that's when the First Nation, Athabasca, Chippewa and First Nation gets notified. And a few days later, the regulator turns around and actually goes, by the way, here's an environmental protection order. The First Nation looks at that and goes, wait, what? Because that was the first time they found out that this seepage that they'd been told in May was just some discoloured water

was actually toxic tailings water that had been seeping out since May and they had not been told about it, they said. Okay, wait, so the regulator and Imperial Oil have been meeting and talking about this for months, but no one actually communicated this to the First Nations? That's correct. That's what the First Nation says. I've asked Imperial Oil and the regulator to clarify exactly what the First Nation was told and when. The regulator said it's up to Imperial Oil, the licensee, to inform affected parties, which is true under the regulations and the law. When I spoke with Chief Alan Adam at Athabasca Chippewa and First Nation,

it really frustrated him because this is not a case where, you know, the local First Nation doesn't really have much to do with what's going on. You know, they have had multiple meetings with Imperial. They've had multiple meetings with the regulator, just standard meetings that they have all the time. And yet nobody brought this up as something that was ongoing. And, I mean, obviously this would have an impact on the First Nation. And I think we'll get to some of the details of the environmental effects here. But I just want to be clear when we're

talking about this timeline, Emma, because there's a couple of things happening here. So there's a drainage pond overflow that happened in February. That's the 5.3 million liters of wastewater. And then there's also leaks that have been kind of ongoing since last May, at least. So there's two separate things here then. Yeah. And is this a seepage from one pond, Emma, or is it multiple? So they're trying to figure out what's going on. There are a lot of unanswered questions when it comes to this case, but the land around here as well is a lot of bog it's a lot of muskeg it's a lot of um you know spongy kind of environment where it soaps up a lot of water think of a sponge right it soaks up a lot of water before it will start letting that water seep out so there's a good

chance it was kind of happening before may that's the first nation's concern that they've told me that because of the nature of the land like how do we know this has only been happening since May? That's one of their big problems and one of their big concerns. I wonder about the broader environmental impacts here. Like what happens to a landscape when this industrial waste seeps into it? It can really impact the environment in a big way. It can impact fish habitats. And where we're talking about, actually, there are a few different tributaries to the Fibag River up there. So

there's a worry that it will negatively impact fish because they don't really like swimming about in toxic water. When it impacts the vegetation, there's a chance that it can also then be eaten by wildlife. Then it's been harvested and then it's being consumed by humans. So Chief Adam reckons about three quarters of the population hunts, fishes, gathers plants in traditional lands up there at Athabasca, Chippewa and First Nation. And a lot of folks have meat, fish, et cetera, frozen that they've just kind of been consuming the entire time. So the chief and council of the First Nation last weekend went and put out a notice and contacted people and went, hey, guys, please stop consuming this stuff because we don't know

if it's contaminated. So they've actually got a program in place that they scrambled to set up whereby people can bring their meat and their fish, et cetera, to be tested and see whether or not it's contaminated. I mean, that's how worried they are about this situation. We'll be right back. If this land is essentially a big sponge, like you were saying, Emma, and there sounds like there's multiple locations that have been identified already as being contaminated, like, can this actually be cleaned up? That's a really good question. And it's one of the things that Imperial has had to submit to the regulator,

the Alberta regulator, saying this is our plan to try and clean this stuff up. But it's going to be one hell of a job because, again, this land is kind of, it's muskeg, right? It's boggy. It's hard to work on. And the other thing to note right now is, what is it, March right now, right? It's cold. It's frozen, especially up in northern Alberta around the oil sands. So they're really going to have to try and hustle as well because once we get to spring melt, there's an extremely good chance you get spring melt, you get runoff, it goes into the tributaries, it goes into the rivers. Imperial doesn't know how much water has been seeping out of its tailings ponds since May. It doesn't know how much water has been seeping out of its tailings ponds since May.

It doesn't know how much contaminated water is in the environment. It just doesn't know. The regulator doesn't know either. And they discovered this in May, but I guess it could have even been going on before they even found out too, right? That would be a possibility. Yes, of course. Because, you know, it took a while to seep up then, you up then through the land and start being seen on the land.

So what have the company and the regulator said in response to the First Nations allegations that there was a cover-up here and that they weren't informed of this issue? So when I first talked to the First Nation, and that was last weekend, they were basically telling me, you know what, they and by they I mean Imperial Oil and the regulator, no one told us anything that was going on. And they were quite angry about it. They're upset. They were frustrated. And so I put to Imperial, like, is that right? Did you guys not tell the First Nation that the C-bpage had been ongoing since May? They actually wouldn't answer that question. I put it to them again, they still wouldn't answer that question. And it took them a few days. Eventually Imperial Oil turned around and said, okay, we've spoken with Chief Adam up in Athabasca, Chippewa and First Nation. And we have communicated that we're basically sorry that our communication about this did not meet community expectations.

We're going to learn from this process and do better. And they also added that they had always intended to tell the First Nation about this situation. They just wanted to figure out what was happening before they looped in the First Nation because they weren't sure what was happening and they wanted to be sure before they kind of caused any alarm along those lines. But the First Nation says, you know what, we had a community benefit agreement. So that stipulates that you're supposed to tell us if there's some kind of environmental situation and you didn't tell us. And has the company said anything like going forward, are they going to have things in place to monitor this kind of problem if it happens again? That is part of what the regulator has told them they need to do. Imperial has actually already done some of this stuff. They have put in

monitoring wells. They have done weekly monitoring actually of the seepage and the water that's coming to try and figure out, you know, is it still toxic, et cetera, et cetera. Again, there's still no answers as to exactly how Imperial is going to fix this. And what has Imperial said about the environmental impacts of what's happened already? Imperial has said, according to their monitoring, there has been no impact to wildlife or fish. And they also say that the potential harm to humans is extremely low. The First Nation counters that. We don't know that. We're testing all the meat anyway because we just don't.

We don't trust you anymore, basically, is what the First Nation have told me. So in this whole situation, Emma, were there any laws broken by how they handled this leak? So the federal body that looks after waterways and the Fisheries Act, which is where a lot of this would come into play, they're investigating. I've spoken with a couple of experts who tell me, yeah, there's an extremely good chance that some Fisheries Act rules were broken here and imperial oil has been slapped already with a non-compliance

order by the Alberta regulator. And what does that mean? Do they have to pay a fine? Right now, there's actually no fine associated with any of this. The reason being that the Alberta Energy Regulator tells me, look, we're looking into it. There's an investigation that has to happen here. I guess I'm wondering what a leak, a spillage of this magnitude might do to the public's perception of these regulators and the oil companies themselves who are working up here, especially when there's accusations of a kind of cover-up essentially here

when it comes to telling the First Nation what's actually going on. So Emma, what does this say about this system here and how it's currently working? Yeah, I spoke with a couple of academics at the University of Calgary who deal with this stuff all the time. And both of them made the point that this really highlights a problem that exists when it comes to oil sands regulations, in that it's kind of a patchwork of provincial and federal rules. And the problem is that issues can fall through the cracks. This really highlights that problem. There's also the worry here about the regulator. Now, one of the academics I spoke with made the point that there have been a lot of issues where it seems that the regulator is working on the side of the oil and gas companies

that it's supposed to regulate. When we look at this case specifically, the regulator had ongoing meetings with Imperial Oil about what they were doing, their monitoring, the seepage issue, what they were finding, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. For months and months and months, they had these meetings. And yet they never told the First Nation and impacted community about these meetings, about the fact any of this stuff was happening. And we should say, though, Emma, you mentioned earlier that the regulator says it is the company's responsibility to inform

the First Nation about something like this happening. Yeah, I mean, the regulator does say that. It says this was not our job to tell folks about this. This is up to the licensee to communicate with folks when there is an issue. And so when it comes to the oil sands more broadly, I mean, there is a larger problem here when it comes to trust of the oil sands as well. That doesn't look great. It doesn't look great for any industry. And in fact, I asked Tim McKay, who is the president of Canadian Natural Resources about this. And he said, yeah, of course it's a concern. His concern was, well, it just doesn't look great

for any industry. When you have an incident like this happen, it reflects badly on all of us, right? So that's something that the oil sands sector is definitely going to have to deal with when it comes to this particular problem. This is obviously a really difficult situation environmentally and in terms of trust between the First Nation and the regulator in this company. What are the next steps here? What do we expect to happen in the next little while? Well, Imperial Oil had to get a bunch of plans into the regulator by the 28th of February. The regulator tells me they have those plans,

the next steps of what Imperial Oil intends to do. Imperial tells me, yep, we've got it all sorted. We've got these next steps plans. We're going to execute those plans. And basically, cleanup is the number one issue here. That's going to be a massive issue because they're going to have to figure out how it's leaking and more to the point, how to fix it. Because where are they going to put the water? How are they going to make sure that this doesn't seep through again? As a business reporter too, I can't imagine that Imperial shareholders will be overly impressed with the amount of money that's going to have to be put into fixing the tailings pond and making sure that it doesn't

leak anymore. So that's where we're at right now. And what about for the First Nation? What are the next steps for them in this situation? Yeah, they've threatened legal action against the regulator, legal action against Imperial Oil. One of the big things that they're talking about here is their infringement of treaty rights in order to be able to hunt, fish, gather plants from their traditional lands. They're saying that they are exploring all their legal options. Part of that may also involve breaching a community agreement

between Imperial Oil and the First Nation if in fact there was some kind of line in there stipulating that they were supposed to be told about environmental issues and they weren't. So again, that's one of the things that could potentially come out of this. Emma, thank you so much for taking the time to walk us through all this today. Hey, no worries. Thanks for having me.

That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wellms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.