Alberta's auditor general will be compiling an independent audit of oil and gas pipeline safety in the province, following a report compiled by Group 10 Engineering (G10) that reviewed the regulations the provincial government has set for oil and gas development in the province.
A coalition of 54 groups, including First Nations and provincial political parties, had been asking for a review since June of 2012, and Don Bester, president of the Alberta Surface Rights Group (ASRG), who is speaking on behalf of the coalition, says he is looking forward to seeing the auditor general's report.
He explains the coalition requested a pipeline safety review following major spills in the province last year, and after stirring up public attention, Ken Hughes, Alberta's energy minister, agreed to employ G10 to compile a review.
The report, which came with a price tag of $450,000, was commissioned in June last year and was completed Dec. 1, and was not what the coalition was hoping for, Bester said.
“We got it here in the last week of August and it's 900 pages of absolutely nothing but reviewing our province's regulatory regulations,” said Bester.
“It was telling us the feel-good attitude that our regulations are the best in the world. All they did was compare us to some other jurisdictions (and countries).
“So we decided right there and then that we did not even get a safety review, so that's why we headed to the auditor general.”
Alberta has averaged two spills of some kind each day for the past decade, he said, noting if the oil and gas industry is to continue as strong as it has in the past, an audit of pipeline safety is essential to continuing that trend.
He attributes the lack of an actual safety audit in the review to the fact that there are major pipelines pending approval, including Keystone XL and the eastern pipeline.
“You think (Premier) Redford wants the rest of the world to know just how unsafe our pipeline systems really are, and how the regulatory body (Energy Resources Conservation Board) had been handling them?” he said.
One problem is that companies are supposed to be regulating themselves and reporting their issues, and in many cases, if it weren't for landowners and other activists reporting them to the public, nobody would have ever known, he said.
This is why the coalition is pushing so hard to get an audit completed.
“Our organization is really appreciative of (the auditor general) actually deciding ‘hey, this isn't what a pipeline safety report should look like.' It should be done independently through the auditor general, and he's agreed to it,” he said.
The ASRG went to everyone they could think of, including the Alberta NDP and Wildrose parties, in order to try and get the audit ordered, he said.
“It wasn't just a bunch of environmental and landowner groups. The other opposition parties actually saw this (report) was just a way of smoothing things over,” he said.
“We are looking forward to seeing (the auditor general's) report.”
Merwan Saher, Alberta's auditor general, said he wanted to do an audit of pipeline safety about a year ago, but after learning that Hughes had commissioned a report already, decided to wait until the results were released, to ensure he wasn't inadvertently doubling up on work already in progress.
“Now, at that time, when (the report) was made public, we took a look at it and we came to the conclusion that it would be appropriate for us to do some audit work ourselves,” said Saher, noting that at that same time his office received requests to do so.
“We had reviewed that report and formed our own conclusion that Albertans would be well served by us doing audit work on the government's monitoring systems to ensure compliance with Alberta regulations.”
His audit will include inspection and enforcement processes, but he would not comment further on the audit process at this point.
“We will look in independently and form a review on whether the systems in place are adequate and actually being used in practice and complied, and if not, how are they dealing with that, and ultimately how does the AER ensure their regulatory process is working,” he said.
Ken Hughes said he welcomes further review by the auditor general, but notes that the report from G10 was a thorough review of the regulations that Alberta has in place, in comparison to other jurisdictions.
“(It) shows the fact that Alberta has a very strong set of regulations to address pipelines in the province, and if the auditor general feels this is an important area to continue to do more work, I welcome that and look forward to having my officials and the AER working with them,” said Hughes.
He noted though some may have a different opinion, the report did address what his ministry wanted to see.
“Clearly, from my perspective, what I'm looking for is an industry that's performing at the best possible level and pushing towards zero tolerance for spills, and for whom there are consequences if there are repeated incidents that demonstrate any given company is not performing at the level we expect,” he said.
