A brand new evaluation of a decade’s value of information saved by Alberta’s oil and gasoline regulator suggests the company has made unsubstantiated claims in regards to the success of oilsands tailings spills cleanup.
“Their very own knowledge, their … inner knowledge usually are not being mirrored within the … data that they’re releasing to the general public,” the examine’s writer, Alberta-based ecologist Kevin Timoney, stated in an interview.
“That’s an enormous drawback.”
Timoney’s examine was primarily based on an entry to data request that returned greater than 6,000 pages of data from the Alberta Vitality Regulator.
The knowledge centered on oilsands tailings spills, that are mixtures of water, sand, bitumen residue and chemical compounds and are thought-about poisonous to fish and different wildlife.
Timoney analyzed the regulator’s inner studies and knowledge for all 514 tailings spills reported between 2014 and 2023.
For the 514 spills analyzed within the examine, the general public database saved by the Alberta Vitality Regulator, or AER, states that 75 per cent have been cleaned up and no wildlife results have been reported.
However in response to Timoney’s evaluation, the regulator doesn’t have any knowledge to again these claims.
For the 514 spills he obtained inner data for, Timoney discovered that 91 per cent weren’t inspected by the regulator. As an alternative, data was offered by oil corporations.
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The examine stated one other 5 per cent had no inspection knowledge of any type.
“AER’s said coverage of ‘routine inspections’ following tailings spills just isn’t supported by the proof,” states the report, which was printed final week within the Environmental Monitoring and Evaluation journal.
For the spills that did have inspection knowledge and studies, Timoney discovered that many studies have been almost clean or contained imprecise data.
He stated many of the studies ended with conclusions corresponding to “no environmental affect presently” or “no hostile results have been noticed” whereas failing to offer any environmental evaluation to assist the discovering.
Timoney stated he wasn’t anticipating the AER to have essentially the most detailed data, however stated he was stunned to search out “nothing.”
“They don’t exit and so they don’t rely useless animals,” he stated. “They don’t decide the contaminant ranges within the soil or within the groundwater or in lakes.
“There’s nothing there.”
Timoney additionally discovered quite a few inconsistencies between the regulator’s inner spill data and the data out there to the general public on-line.
One occasion of information inconsistency famous within the examine is a case the place the regulator’s public database had labelled the entire quantity of a spill as 44.6 million litres. The inner data offered to Timoney for a similar incident pegged the spill about 100 occasions bigger, nearer to 4.5 billion litres.
“That single spill resulted in a launch quantity 15 occasions bigger than the entire (public database) quantity for all 514 tailings spills,” the examine reads.
“The explanation given by the AER for reporting the wrong … quantity (within the public database) was as follows: ‘The volumes tab doesn’t enable a quantity that top to be captured.’”
There’s an unlimited distinction within the spills themselves. Whereas the AER says there have been 514 over the 10-year time interval, Timoney stated he was offered data for nearly double that, at 989.
In a single occasion, the data Timoney obtained confirmed that the AER’s public database grouped 23 separate spills into one.
Martin Olszynski, an vitality regulation professor on the College of Calgary, says the examine confirms issues that the regulator is making use of an “extremely mild contact” with the trade it’s charged with holding to account.
“The trade all the time talks about, you already know, being world class, the cleanest, (having) the most effective environmental efficiency, and we don’t actually even have a foundation for trusting these claims anymore,” stated OIszynski.
Renato Gandia, a spokesperson for the Alberta Vitality Regulator, stated the company was nonetheless reviewing the examine, however stated workers do examine tailings spills.
“The AER routinely conducts inspections to make sure that releases have been cleaned up and remediated in accordance with the laws,” Gandia stated.
A request for remark despatched to Vitality Minister Brian Jean was forwarded to Surroundings Minister Rebecca Schulz.
In an e mail Monday, Schulz’s press secretary Ryan Fournier stated Alberta’s oilsands are “one of the vital extremely monitored on this planet” and any questions in regards to the validity of the regulator’s processes needs to be despatched to the regulator.
“Whereas Alberta’s monitoring system is likely one of the greatest on this planet, we anticipate the AER to do its job and handle these incidents in a well timed and efficient approach,” Fournier stated.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
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