A spill of surface runoff from a containment pond at Suncor Energy’s Fort Hills oilsands site may have spanned more than a year, the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) has announced, far more and for far longer than the company originally revealed.
The regulator said that on October 9, the Calgary-based fossil reported an “unplanned release” of around 662,000 litres from the pond adjacent to Fort Hills into the Athabasca River, The Canadian Press reports.
But on November 24, Suncor informed the AER that the spill was likely much larger than originally reported.
The news landed just two days after the AER said it would not reconsider its approval of Suncor’s plan to expand the Fort Hills facility into the largely intact McClelland Lake wetland, triggering the extraction of another billion barrels of oilsands bitumen. It was also four days after Imperial Oil reported it had poured about 670,000 litres of contaminated water from its Kearl oilsands mine into the Muskeg River.
“Further investigation of this matter indicated the unplanned release volume may have been closer to 10,000 cubic metres,” or about 10 million litres, the regulator said last Friday a news release on the Suncor spill. “Suncor has also informed the AER that the unplanned release may have been in effect since June 2022 and believe the cause of the release is likely to be a faulty valve.”
Suncor has taken water quality samples of the pond, the results of which indicate the water spilled into the river was “within release criteria parameters for discharge,” the AER said.
The pond the water was released from “is not related to mining, extraction or tailings processes, and contains precipitation and snow melt water,” it said.
Suncor also offered reassurances on Saturday that the water in question posed no threat.
“This water does not come into contact with any processes on our site,” Suncor spokesperson Jessica Depencier said in an emailed statement.
She said testing in 2022 and 2023 showed the water in the collection pond met regulatory release criteria, and Suncor has “no evidence indicating any of the water that may have been released would not have met regulatory requirements.?”
The regulator said it visited the site and found the valve is not currently leaking, adding it will be reviewing sampling data from June 2022 through to November 2023.
Depencier said the release was “potentially due to a valve that controls water flow from the pond to the river not being fully closed.” The company confirmed the valve was completely closed on October 9.
She said Suncor company plans to “implement automated alarms to provide early awareness to changes in operating conditions.”
Suncor and the AER have informed communities and stakeholders in the area, the regulator said, and Environment and Climate Change Canada has also been notified.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published November 25, 2023.
