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Page added on July 18, 2015
Alberta pipeline breach causes massive spill
China-subsidiary company apologizes, says cleanup underway for one of North America’s largest-ever oil spills on land
Nexen Energy apologized Friday for an oil sands pipeline leak in the Canadian province of Alberta that is one of North America’s largest-ever oil-related spills on land, and said its cleanup crews were working around the clock. The pipeline leaked 31,500 barrels of emulsion — a mixture of bitumen, water and sand, the equivalent of 5 million liters of tar sands oil, or 1.3 million gallons.
Nexen, a subsidiary of China’s CNOOC Ltd., said it is still trying to find the root cause of the leak in the new pipeline, which was installed last year. The company has found a visible breach about the size of a hand.
The incident is another blow for the environmental record of the oil sands industry, already under fire from activists for its carbon-intensive production process.
Ron Bailey, a Nexen senior vice president who leads the company’s Canadian operations, said the company is “deeply concerned” about the spill, which it detected at its Long Lake facility on Wednesday.
The company said it thinks restarting the pipeline, which connects its Kinosis oil sands project to the Long Lake facility, will take “some time.”
The spill covered about 4 acres, and the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) said the leak did not contaminate any bodies of water.
The regulator has sent investigators to Long Lake to try to determine the cause of the pipeline failure.
Environment Canada’s Enforcement Branch said it has opened a file on the incident, and was in the early stages of gathering information.
“This leak is also a good reminder that Alberta has a long way to go to address its pipeline problems, and that communities have good reasons to fear having more built,” Greenpeace spokesman Peter Louwe told CBC. “New pipelines would also facilitate the expansion of the tar sands — Canada’s fastest-growing source of carbon emissions — and accelerate the climate crisis even more.”
Nexen shut down the pipeline at its 72,000-barrel-per-day Long Lake facility, about 22 miles southeast of the oil sands hub of Fort McMurray, and said it has isolated the pipeline as part of the clean up operation.
9 Comments on "Alberta pipeline breach causes massive spill"
idontknowmyself on Sat, 18th Jul 2015 1:15 pm
Some Canadian oil sand companies have been sold to Chinese because they were not profitable. Canadians owner of these companies have sold them to naive Chinese before their values crashes down to the ground.
Makati1 on Sat, 18th Jul 2015 9:15 pm
Canadian tar sands are on the way out. This is just a sign of their future.
Newfie on Sun, 19th Jul 2015 5:37 am
Al Jazeera is reporting on Canada ?
Bob Owens on Sun, 19th Jul 2015 6:04 pm
I hope this industry dies a quick death. The sooner these awful options are eliminated the sooner we can transfer to wind/solar.
Makati1 on Sun, 19th Jul 2015 10:56 pm
Bob, no transfer is coming. Sorry to burst your bubble. I agree that the Age of Petroleum should end now, but…
Boat on Sun, 19th Jul 2015 10:59 pm
I am with ya Bob, some just can’t see the writing on the wall.
Makati1 on Sun, 19th Jul 2015 11:00 pm
Total energy produced to date, this year in Billions of BTUs: ~263,000,000
Total produced by wind and solar in Billions of BTUs: ~3,800,000
With less than 2% being produced after decades of promises of ‘alternative’ energy taking over oil, that is the result.
Makati1 on Sun, 19th Jul 2015 11:03 pm
BTW: those numbers are from OilPrice.com and are for ALL energy sources globally.
cp1 on Mon, 20th Jul 2015 3:06 pm
All the numbers on renewables look pretty much the same.
I used the EIA Jun MER for a pie graph of US PE for 2014. The wind+solar+geothermal/total = .0242 (2.4%).
EIA likes to add hydro (2.51%) and biomass (4.85%) into the renewables category, which is how they get a figure approaching 10%.
BP’s SROWE PE stats doesn’t say explicitly what’s in their renewables category, but whatever, as a fraction of total PE it only came up to 1.77% in 2014. That may be the same data as Oilprice.com?