Study says Alberta’s oil and gas regulator lacks evidence for tailings spill cleanup claims [Video]

A new analysis of a decade’s worth of data kept by Alberta’s oil and gas regulator suggests the agency has made unsubstantiated claims about the success of oilsands tailings spills cleanup.

“Their own data, their … internal data are not being reflected in the … information that they’re releasing to the public,” the study’s author, Alberta-based ecologist Kevin Timoney, said in an interview.

“That’s a huge problem.”

Timoney’s study was based on an access to information request that returned more than 6,000 pages of information from the Alberta Energy Regulator.

The information focused on oilsands tailings spills, which are mixtures of water, sand, bitumen residue and chemicals and are considered toxic to fish and other wildlife.

Timoney analyzed the regulator’s internal reports and data for all 514 tailings spills reported between 2014 and 2023.

For the 514 spills analyzed in the study, the public database kept by the Alberta Energy Regulator, or AER, states …