Alberta pollution limits being tested

As quickly as the Alberta government enacted legal limits on air and water pollutants in its oil sands region, Shell Canada undermined the effort.

In a document submitted to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, Shell said annual emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide from its proposed additional of 100,000 barrels per day at its Jackpine mine would exceed the Alberta threshold.

The provincial standards, intended to place a fixed limit on the overall environmental impact by industry, were announced in August and accompanied by assurances that the caps would be legally binding.

However, the Shell report indicates that planned oil sands development could see the two gases that contribute to acid rain acidify 23 small lakes and possibly wipe out a caribou population.

Simon Dyer, policy director at the Pembina Institute, a Calgary-based environmental lobby group, said the Shell report will force regulators to “start turning down projects to stay under the limits, or they are seriously going to have to ratchet back on the performance of all the existing operators to try to get those pollutants down to levels to enable the industry to grow.”

He said the Shell disclosure “validates the concern that many stakeholders have raised about the cumulative pace and scale of (oil sands) development. It’s the first real test of the Alberta plan.”

The Shell report, written by environmental consultants Golder and Associates, estimates that annual levels of sulfur dioxide are about 20 times what they would naturally be over a large area of the Athabasca formation, while nitrogen dioxide is estimated to be at least 10 times pre-development levels.

Randall Barrett, director of the Alberta Environment Department’s northern region, said the projections are derived from models deliberately designed to overestimate emissions as a way to ensure caution.

He said the actual air monitoring data continues to show both gases actually remain well under the government caps.

But if the gases rise as more oil sands operations come on stream, the government plan includes “trigger” levels that would require the industry to improve its pollution controls.

Environment Minister Diana McQueen, in announcing the new limits in late August, said the plan was a “legally binding commitment that holds government accountable to Albertans.”

—Gary Park