Comnment by a rural Albertan:
can’t really just call it corruption anymore … so i’m gonna call it “dumbfuck corruption for really advanced projects supported by dumbfuck albertans”
Lynnette Brown:
Why is this a surprise to anyone?
Smith/UCP demand such “tight regulations” for the no-emissions clean energy technology, yet have substandard demands and oversight for the fossil fuel industry – the very industry that feeds them their pablum daily.
Anne Bouscal:
“The industry always talks about, you know, being world class, the cleanest, (having) the best environmental performance, and we don’t really actually have a basis for trusting those claims anymore,” said OIszynski.”
But the UCP are happy with the status quo in the energy industry. And now she’s signed a contract with Enbridge to have another task force. I hope she hasn’t given them any of our money.
@charlesrusnell.bsky.social:
This study is damning. …
It shows the Alberta Energy Regulator has been lying to the public. It shows the AER is not monitoring the oilsands tailings ponds to even the most basic standards.
Alberta Energy Regulator lacks evidence for tailings spill cleanup claims: study, For the 514 spills he received internal records for, Kevin Timoney found that 91 per cent weren’t inspected by the regulator. Instead, information was provided by oil companies by Jack Farrell, The Canadian Press, Jan 6, 2024, Calgary Herald
EDMONTON — A new analysis of a decade’s worth of data kept by Alberta’s oil and gas regulator suggests the agency has made unsubstantiated claims
That’s AER’s Standard Best Practice! about the success of oilsands tailings spills cleanup.
“Their own data, their … internal data are not being reflected in the … information that they’re releasing to the public,” the study’s author, Alberta-based ecologist Kevin Timoney, said in an interview.
“That’s a huge problem.”
Timoney’s study was based on an access to information request that returned more than 6,000 pages of information from the Alberta Energy Regulator.
The information focused on oilsands tailings spills, which are mixtures of water, sand, bitumen residue and chemicals and are considered toxic to fish and other wildlife.
Timoney analyzed the regulator’s internal reports and data for all 514 tailings spills reported between 2014 and 2023.
For the 514 spills analyzed in the study, the public database kept by the Alberta Energy Regulator, or AER, states that 75 per cent were cleaned up and no wildlife effects were reported.
But according to Timoney’s analysis, the regulator doesn’t have any data to back those claims.Also Standard AER Best Practice! World Class! Always!
‘There’s nothing there’
For the 514 spills he received internal records for, Timoney found that 91 per cent weren’t inspected by the regulator. Instead, information was provided by oil companies.
The study said another five per cent had no inspection data of any sort.
“AER’s stated policy of ’routine inspections’ following tailings spills is not supported by the evidence,” states the report, which was published last week in the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment journal.
For the spills that did have inspection data and reports, Timoney found that many reports were nearly blank or contained vague information.
He said most of the reports ended with conclusions such as “no environmental impact at this time” or “no adverse effects have been observed” while failing to provide any environmental assessment to support the finding.
Timoney said he wasn’t expecting the AER to have the most detailed information, but said he was surprised to find “nothing.”
“They don’t go out and they don’t count dead animals,” he said. “They don’t determine the contaminant levels in the soil or in the groundwater or in lakes.Standard energy regulator practice, everywhere. If one does not look, one does not see, and can lie with freedom and glee.
“There’s nothing there.”
Inconsistencies between internal and public records
Timoney also found numerous inconsistencies between the regulator’s internal spill records and the records available to the public online.
One instance of data inconsistency noted in the study is a case where the regulator’s public database had labelled the total volume of a spill as 44.6 million litres. The internal records provided to Timoney for the same incident pegged the spill about 100 times larger, closer to 4.5 billion litres.
“That single spill resulted in a release volume 15 times larger than the total (public database) volume for all 514 tailings spills,” the study reads.
“The reason given by the AER for reporting the incorrect … volume (in the public database) was as follows: ‘The volumes tab does not allow a number that high to be captured.”’!!
There’s a vast difference in the spills themselves. While the AER says there were 514 over the 10-year time period, Timoney said he was provided records for almost double that, at 989.
In one instance, the records Timoney received showed that the AER’s public database grouped 23 separate spills into one.
AER reviewing study
Martin Olszynski, an energy law professor at the University of Calgary, says the study confirms concerns that the regulator is applying an “incredibly light touch” with the industry it is charged with holding to account.
“The industry always talks about, you know, being world class, the cleanest, (having) the best environmental performance, and we don’t really actually have a basis for trusting those claims anymore,” said OIszynski.
Renato Gandia, a spokesperson for the Alberta Energy Regulator, said the agency was still reviewing the study, but said staff do inspect tailings spills.
“The AER routinely conducts inspections to ensure that releases have been cleaned up and remediated in accordance with the regulations,” Gandia said.
A request for comment sent to Energy Minister Brian Jean was forwarded to Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz.
In an email Monday, Schulz’s press secretary Ryan Fournier said Alberta’s oilsands are “one of the most highly monitored in the world” and any questions about the validity of the regulator’s processes should be sent to the regulator.World Class pass the puck environmental and energy “regulation.” Not our responsible says Environment, go to AER. Not our responsibility, says AER, go to Environment. Etc.
“While Alberta’s monitoring system is one of the best in the world, we expect the AER to do its job and manage these incidents in a timely and effective way,” Fournier said.
Below is a snap from the comments section of an Aug 8, 2019 Nikiforuk article in The Tyee. annie_fiftyseven brilliantly sums up how the oil patch is regulated in Alberta.
New report debunks Alberta Energy Regulator’s tailings spills data, Regulator’s data lacks crucial evidence of environmental harm, with spill volumes and footprints vastly understated, ecologist Kevin Timoney finds by Jeremy Appel, Jan 06, 2025
A new academic study examining 514 bitumen tailings spills in Alberta over a decade has found that the provincial regulator’s records “lack the ecological, biological, and chemical data required to assess and manage the environmental impacts of tailings spills.”
The report, published by ecologist Kevin Timoney in the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment journal on Jan. 3, challenges the Alberta Energy Regulator’s (AER) claim that tailings spills haven’t caused any environmental damage.
In an interview with the Orchard, Timoney called this claim a “red flag, because that’s not physically possible in the real world.”
Tailings are the toxic sludge that emanates from the tar sands extraction process, which are stored in pools often referred to as ponds.
Spills can have major health impacts on water quality, wildlife, the environment and public health, underscoring the importance of the public having access to clear and reliable data about them.
For the paper, Timoney examined the AER’s publicly available Field Inspection System (FIS) database for each tailings spill that occurred from January 2014 to May 2023, and filed freedom of information requests for all documents relating to those incidents that were in the AER’s possession, including photos of the spill sites, which the article describes as the sole piece “objective data” contained in the documents.
By comparing the documents he received with the publicly reported data, he was able to assess the “reliability and credibility of the data,” Timoney explained.
In 99% of the spills examined, the AER claimed publicly that the spill footprint was less than 100 square metres, which Timoney said is “not physically possible, given the … known relationship between spill volume and spill footprints.”
“It’s like you’re stating that you spilled a gallon of milk onto the head of a pin,” he explained.
The study outlines how the AER has vastly underreported volumes and footprints of tailings spills. In one instance, the FIS publicly reported a spill of 44,596 m3. But the documents Timoney obtained showed that the AER knew its true volume was 4,459,680 m3—100 times larger.
Timoney found that the AER had conducted routine inspections on just 3.2% of the tailings spills, calling into question how the AER can make sweeping claims about a lack of environmental impact.
In another incident, the FIS publicly reported a spill volume of 500 m3, which was later increased tenfold to 5,000 m3. While the AER claimed there was “no environmental impact,” the regulator never conducted an inspection.
The FIS reported the spill’s footprint as less than 100 m2, whereas the documents Timoney obtained reported it as 465 m2, which he said based on the photograph evidence is still an understatement.
“Images show spilled bitumen, soil contamination in a large footprint, and contact with vegetation. Both the spill volume and spill impact were visual estimates,” Timoney writes in the study.
The article notes how the AER routinely makes basic reporting errors on spill dates and locations, which calls its research methods into further question.
In addition to establishing that the AER’s data collection methods aren’t credible, the study aims to establish a “plausible rate of harm.”
Important data, such as the spills’ chemical impact on water, wildlife, vegetation and soil, were absent from the documents, so Timoney was forced to gauge these factors based on photos alone.
Based on the photographic evidence, Timoney concluded that somewhere in the range of 41% to 54% of the photographed spills had evidence of environmental damage.
But only a quarter of the spills had photographs taken. Extrapolating the rate of environmental damage from the cases with photos, Timoney calculated that anywhere from 23% to 36% of tailings spills caused environmental harm.
In most of the cases where there was no visible environmental damage from the tailings spills, Timoney explained, it was because the spills occurred in “areas that have been so heavily impacted already that you can’t really detect an effect … because it’s already been completely devastated.”
“In those cases, I gave the AER the benefit of the doubt and said, ‘I can’t detect an effect here based on the photography, because the area is already devoid of life.’ It’s an unliving substrate that has been so heavily disturbed by humans that there is no effect,” he explained.
The study argues that the AER’s inability to provide credible information isn’t accidental. Rather, it reflects the reality of a captured regulator, whose primary aim is to provide justification for the industry that it’s tasked with holding to account.
AER spokesperson Renato Gandia told the Orchard that the regulator has received Timoney’s report and its “subject matter experts will review the data for a more comprehensive response at a later time.”
“In regard to tailings spills generally, once a release occurs, companies must report the incident and complete a release report to record the release type, volume released and recovered, location, any adverse effects on the environment, and other information,” Gandia wrote.
He added that the regulator “routinely conducts inspections to ensure that releases have been cleaned up and remediated in accordance with the regulations [and] to assess potential adverse impacts to the environment and wildlife.”
You can read Timoney’s paper in full…
RESEARCH
Regulatory failure to monitor and manage the impacts of tailings spills, Alberta, Canada by Kevin P. Timoney, 03 January 2025, Springer Nature
Received: 27 June 2024 / Accepted: 12 November 2024, Vol.: (0123456789) Environ Monit Assess (2025) 197:125
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-024-13416-1
Abstract
Based on analysis of documents obtained in public databases and under freedom of informa-
tion requests, this study assessed the Alberta Energy Regulator’s (AER) monitoring and management of bitumen tailings spills. The AER’s claims of no environmental impacts at any tailings spills lack corroborative environmental data. Claims of perfect spill recovery in 75% of tailings spills are not supported by credible evidence. AER’s spill footprints are unrealistically small relative to the spill volumes. The reported number of spills and total spill volumes are underestimates of the true rates. Reported spill locations are imprecise and inaccurate. For many spills, incident dates are not being accurately reported. The AER claim of routine inspections of spills is not supported by data; only ~ 3.2% of reported tailings spills are inspected. The AER’s tailings spill data lack the ecological, biological, and chemical data required to assess and manage the environmental impacts of tailings spills. Approximately 41–54% of tailings spill sites with photographic documentation showed evidence of environmental harm. If similar rates of harm in relation to tailings spill volumes apply to spills lacking photographic evidence, environmental harm would be inferred in 23–36% of those spills. The AER’s failure to gather credible and relevant environ mental data, conduct routine on-site inspections, and protect ecosystems from harm is inconsistent with its regulatory responsibilities.
As a result of chronic mismanagement since 1967, ecological risks will persist for decades. The true magnitude of the ecological impacts of tailings spills may never be known.
Refer also to:
Image above by FrackingCanada
2007:
The Alberta Gov’t turned EUB into ERCB after it got caught breaking the law, spied on innocent cookie baking Alberta grandmothers and violated client solicitor privilege (like my own ex lawyer, Murray Klippenstein did, in a so called sworn to be honest Affidavit filed in court). It was ERCB before the gov’t changed it into EUB.
After my lawsuit went public, the gov’t changed ERCB into AER.
2013:
Alberta’s bitumen tar gunge break through to surface that also contaminated groundwater many kilometres from the surface spill sites. In that area, the tarsands are frac’d with high pressure steam.
AER is more than just an enabler for criminal multinational polluters. It’s a charter-violating, fraud-engaging criminal too and an ugly nasty bully and boring lazy liar. Instead of regulating billion dollar profit raping companies and holding them accountable for their endless crimes contaminating air, land and water, and sickening many Albertans, pets, livestock, fish and wildlife, AER – like the mob – sends out its goons to terrorize and harass harmed Albertans.
