Andrew Nikiforuk will be speaking at the Common Causes ‘Pros & Cons: Policies for People and the Planet’ teach-in on June 29 in Calgary. He has been writing about the energy industry for two decades and is a contributing editor to The Tyee.
Today, he writes, “Nearly a dozen days after the fact, Alberta’s tardy energy regulator has reported that a ruptured pipeline owned by Apache has spilled nearly 60,000 barrels of contaminated water near Zama City, Alberta. A pipeline carrying ‘produced water’ from an oil field to a waste injection site broke on June 1, contaminating 42 hectares of muskeg. Produced water can be highly saline and contain a variety of petroleum toxins as well as heavy metals.”
Other media reports note that the spill has reached the tributaries that feed into the Zama River.
The Globe and Mail reports, “It comes amid heightened sensitivity about pipeline safety, as the industry faces broad public opposition to plans for a series of major new oil export pipelines to the U.S., British Columbia and eastern Canada. …The leak follows a pair of other major spills in the region, including 800,000 litres of an oil-water mixture from Pace Oil and Gas Ltd., and nearly 3.5 million litres of oil from a pipeline run by Plains Midstream Canada.” Nikiforuk adds, “A Global News investigation found that Alberta’s pipeline infrastructure has leaked 61,000 times in the last 37 years. Approximately 29,000 spills involved oil, a rate of two crude oil spills a day. The remainder involved everything from salt water to condensate.”
For more, please read:
Apache spill is one of Alberta’s largest pipeline ruptures
Toxic waste spill in northern Alberta biggest of recent disasters in North America
UPDATE: Common Causes hosts public forum to counter Conservative convention in Calgary
Common Causes website
