Imperial receives “slap on the wrist” for leak in oil sands dumps

An Alberta regulator has fined ExxonMobil subsidiary Imperial Oil $50,000 for allowing water contaminated with arsenic, dissolved metals and hydrocarbons to leak from tailings ponds at the Kearl oil sands facility over a period of years.

The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) administrative penalty is the maximum penalty permitted under provincial regulations. Law on the Protection and Improvement of the Environmentreports the Globe and Mail. Imperial will also be asked to “conduct studies and develop plans to improve transparency and response strategies,” develop a plan to mitigate tailings emissions and “ensure that monitoring processes are sufficiently good,” the news report said.

A study by management consultancy Deloitte found that AER knew about a leak at the plant as early as 2019, The Canadian Press reported last year. Nearby First Nations communities did not receive limited notification of a seepage “incident” until May 2022. That leak did not attract wider attention until February 2023, when an estimated 5.3 million litres of contaminated industrial wastewater leaked from a retention pond in Kearl.

This subsequent leak is still being investigated by the AER and Environment Canada, the Globe writes.

Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation told the Globe that he blames the provincial government for the low fine, even though the AER is supposed to operate as an independent agency.

“The CEO can do this in half a day, so this is a slap on the wrist in terms of our community and our concerns,” he said. “They washed their hands of it and said, ‘Fuck you, Fort Chip.’ If you ask people in the community, they’ll tell you the same thing: The government doesn’t care about us.”

“If the AER was serious about protecting local communities and the environment, Imperial Oil would have faced criminal prosecution and a large fine,” said Aliénor Rougeot, climate and energy program manager at Environmental Defence Canada, in a press release. “The quality assurance measures imposed today by the regulator should have been in place long before Imperial was licensed to operate.”

Just as the AER announced its fine, Adam and Kendrick Cardinal, president of the Métis of Fort Chipewyan, warned their communities to stay away from Lake Athabasca due to concerns about water quality and possible contamination, CBC reported.

“We’ve all known for a long time that there’s something wrong with the water here,” Cardinal said in a Facebook video. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure this community is safe and the water is clean.”

The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation declined to comment beyond its warning to the community until it receives the results of water quality tests in the next two or three weeks. But Fort Chipewyan Elder Alice Rigney said the questions and concerns are nothing new.

“I mean, there are barges and boats loading and unloading at the port all the time, so there’s always gas on the surface. And what comes out of the oil sands seeps into the river system,” she told CBC.

“They know something is going on – we’ve known it for ages,” she added. “It’s just fallen on deaf ears.”