“The Alberta Model” Greedy & Gagging in Nova Scotia: Triangle Petroleum leaves taxpayers to clean up frac sites & waste pits, Gags Energy Dept

Fracking company leaves province with the cleanup by Ken Summers, December 14, 2016, Nova Scotia Advocate

(KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – Ten years after Nova Scotia enticed Triangle Petroleum to experiment with hydraulic fracturing for shale gas in Kennetcook, Hants County, it’s the province that is cleaning up the mess it  left behind.

In 2007 Energy Department Petroleum Division staff began carefully shepherding Triangle’s approval applications along  to make sure the company cleared the regulatory requirements of multiple departments. Ever since the department has taken a casual approach to whether Triangle met its regulatory commitments.

This summer the  oil company filed for bankruptcy in the US. Triangle Petroleum is still operating, but the government of Nova Scotia is left taking care of cleanup at the six well sites around Hants County. This includes finishing the extensive cleanup of two fracking waste holding ponds, a project now managed by the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal.

Petroleum Division promotes development, regulatory compliance is optional

The Nova Scotia Fracking Resource Action Council report Out of Control  documents the floundering of an ill-prepared department of Environment while it tries to come to terms with the fracking waste ponds it inherited from the Petroleum Division of the Energy Department.

While Environment staff actively wrestled with what to do about the waste ponds and negotiated potential courses of action with Triangle Petroleum, Energy staff took on the self-appointed role of advocacy for the company.

Belated cleanup halted when company files for protection from creditors

The draining and processing of the nearly 20 million litres of waste water at the two Kennetcook holding ponds finally began in 2015. The project was paused for winter, and was due to start again and be completed in 2016. Instead,  Triangle Petroleum filed in the US for protection from its creditors.

Executive Director Sandy MacMullin of the Energy Department Petroleum Division is a very capable communicator, so the Nova Scotia Advocate hoped to interview him about how the province got into this situation. Our queries began more than two months ago. After a pause for internal deliberation, the department’s spokesperson said that the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure is handling the arrangements.

A week was spent with that department establishing that Energy were the ones who had secured the “agreement” with Triangle Petroleum. So we returned to the Energy department with the basic question why the government is now managing the clean-up, and who is paying for it. Three weeks later we got our reply.

The Department could not discuss the circumstances surrounding the agreement because of “legal provisions.”

Nova Scotians have no way of knowing whether this legal agreement gives the province any real possibility of recovering the costs of the ongoing clean-up. Non-disclosure provisions of agreements are not unusual. But this one raises the obvious question of whether that non-disclosure serves to protect Triangle Petroleum, or to protect the government from scrutiny by its citizens.

Non-disclosure provisions apply to the terms of an agreement- not to the history of a project. But the Department of Energy continues to hide behind the screen of “legal provisions” when it declines to discuss how the province came to assume responsibility for project cleanup and remediation.

Promoting onshore development of oil and gas

The mission of making Nova Scotia desirable for oil and gas development transcends changes in government, and that mission resides in the Energy department’s Petroleum Division.

Anytime there is a hint of restricting fossil fuel development in Nova Scotia, we are treated to an endless stream of protests about the bonanza we are missing out on. The oil and gas industry has a well established interest in developing Nova Scotia’s offshore resources, but the onshore geology of our province is quite different. The only real interest in onshore oil and gas development comes from small junior exploration companies, hustling other people’s money for their projects.

[Refer also to:

2016 05 21: Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench Chief Justice Wittmann rules for creditors instead of clean-up when energy companies go bankrupt, Rules against Albertans, water, land and air

2016 05 27: “Where does the buck stop?” AER to appeal ruling on oil, gas cleanup obligations. Chief Justice Wittmann found Alberta’s oil and gas licencing regime to be unconstitutional relating to money, but not in Ernst’s “valid” constitutional claim against AER relating to drinking water contamination by oil and gas

2016 10 13: AER Redwater Appeal: Will the courts protect the rich, make ordinary Canadians pay for industry’s abandoned oilfield messes? Alberta Court of Appeal to decide who will pay for Redwater’s abandoned wells after bankruptcy (using the law to intentionally avoid responsibility after years of profit-taking?)

2016 10 22: Is AER vs Redwater worsening cleanup of abandoned oil and gas wells in Alberta, BC and Sasktchewan? Did AER file the lawsuit intentionally to set legal precedent and dump clean up costs on taxpayers to enhance profits for oil and gas companies?

2016 11 15: Really? “Tougher Alberta rules convince oil & gas producers to accelerate well cleanups.” What good does “accelerating” zero do? Why not just clean up now and quit the pathetic whining? Why then did the oilpatch dump their unpaid bills on farmers? The worst is yet to come.

2016 08 07: Prosperity Alberta style: Record numbers of farmers being ripped off by the oil and gas industry, seeking lapsed payments

2016 06 28: AER calls itself a regulator? A law enforcer? Legally immune, grossly over paid, law-violating scaredy-cat more like it. AER backtracks again, to keep angry oil patch execs and banks happy.

2016 06 14: “Prosperous” Greedy Alberta: Bankrupt energy firms add to abandoned well problems, Nearly 150,000 oil wells are inactive or abandoned

2016 08 18: More and more energy companies not making payments to Saskatchewan, Alberta landowners. Why would they? Landowners, urgent with greed, signed leases they didn’t read, with few legal protections. Multi-billion dollar profit-taker CNRL asks for 30% property tax cut. Do landowners ripped off by oil companies get tax cuts? Do citizens and communities with their water, land and air poisoned by frac companies get tax cuts?

2014 11 03: Nova Scotians think for themselves, say no to Triangle’s plan to dump millions of litres of 7 year old frac waste into Amherst water treatment system on Tantramar Marshes

2014 08 03: American Peter Hill, CEO of Triangle Petroleum, Still Hasn’t Cleaned up His Company’s Toxic Frac Waste from Years Ago, But Wants to Make More

2014 05 24: Experiment for Atlantic Industrial Services frack waste buring in Lafarge cement plant receives county blessing; families and communities to be the guinea pigs

2014 04 19: Nova Scotia regulator gives OK for seven year old frac wastewater to be trucked from Debert to Brookfield and used in Lafarge Canada’s cement plant

2013 12 11: Fracking up the cement industry, Nova Scotia government wants to ban dumping of fracking waste in province, Lafarge applied for pilot project to use frack waste water to make cement!

2012 11 29: Triangle Petroleum fracking radioactive waste water cleanup target missed in Nova Scotia ]

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