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Oil sands operations claim more ducks
Gary Park For Petroleum News
If timing is everything, proponents of Canada’s oil sands must be under the impression they have nothing.
Just as a senior official from the U.S. State Department was being shown the environmental and safety performance at northern Alberta’s oil sands operations and just as a court was imposing a C$3 million fine on Syncrude Canada for the worst environmental black eye the sector has received, another dose of trouble landed in the industry’s lap.
An estimated 350 ducks met their end in the oil sands, again most of them in a toxic waste pond at the Syncrude operations, but others at the Suncor Energy and Shell Canada plants.
The latest incident came three days after an Alberta court imposed the largest environmental fine in Alberta history on the Imperial Oil-led Syncrude consortium for allowing 1,600 ducks to perish on a tailings pond in 2008 — a tragedy that became an international rallying point for critics of the oil sands.
The preliminary assessment of the Oct. 25 event suggested freezing rain forced the bids to land, many of them in the tailings ponds. An investigation is under way.
Officials say penalty too light But Canada’s Environment Minister Jim Prentice and Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach reacted with dismay.
According to the National Post, Prentice already felt the C$3 million penalty imposed on Syncrude was too light and may be inclined to introduce more punitive measures.
“In light of the courts just making their (Syncrude) decision, it’s certainly aggravating and frustrating,” said Stelmach, who has been leading government efforts to improve the oil sands’ image.
He wants to know why the incident happened and whether the companies — who claim their warning systems for birds were functioning and that they deployed extra staff — failed to comply with regulations.
The biggest worry is what U.S. International Energy Affairs envoy David Goldwyn will have to say about his on-sight visit in his report to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
At stake could be a U.S. government decision on TransCanada’s planned US$12 billion Keystone pipeline expansion to the U.S. Gulf Coast and, with it, the future of oil sands exports to the U.S.
Birds die in wind turbines The 11,500 green-energy wind turbines in California reportedly shred more migratory birds in a month than all of the ducks that have died in the two Syncrude events.
But Goldwyn said the impact of the oil sands on migratory birds and the region’s water sources “are issues of great sensitivity in the U.S. We don’t want to be aggravating the problem, so we’re very interested in the government’s response.”
He said the Alberta government and the industry clearly understand how negative events affect their image, so “it’s in everybody’s best interest to deal with the issues.”
And that’s the challenge facing those who control and profit from the oil sands: What steps can they take before they might face limits on oil sands crude flowing into the U.S?
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