First Nation sues governments over Husky pipeline spill

A series of pipeline safety recommendations that were handed down five years ago but have not been fully implemented are at the centre of a Saskatchewan First Nation’s lawsuit, which lays part of the blame for a Husky Energy Inc. pipeline spill on the provincial government’s failure to prevent it from happening.

The spill breached treaty rights and had a “devastating impact” on traditional hunting and fishing lands, as well as the lives of the First Nation’s members, James Smith Cree Nation Chief Wallace Burns said in a statement of claim filed Thursday on behalf of the community near Melfort. The claim also names the federal government as a defendant.

Statements of claim contain allegations that have not been proven in court.

The government failed “to establish sufficient thresholds for pipeline construction, maintenance and regulation to ensure that the effects of the … spill did not and would not interfere with the plaintiffs’ meaningful exercise of treaty rights in perpetuity (and) failing to ensure the effects of (the spill) … did not and would not exceed those thresholds,” the claim states.

Despite Premier Brad Wall’s claim that pipeline safety is “very, very important,” provincial auditor Judy Ferguson concluded last month that the Ministry of Energy and Resources had implemented four of seven recommendations put forward in 2012, designed to bring it into compliance with the law, and was “not doing enough” to effectively regulate pipelines.

The July 20, 2016, spill sent downstream communities scrambling to establish secondary sources of drinking water and led to a $107 million cleanup. The claim states that the provincial and federal governments acted “in a secretive, oppressive and high-handed manner” and failed to respond to the spill “in a timely fashion.”

The incident remains under investigation by federal and provincial authorities. The Saskatchewan Party government turned the results of its probe over to prosecutors on March 23. A decision on whether provincial charges will be laid has not been made. Environment and Climate Change Canada wants the courts to compel Husky to disclose more information.

Husky has attributed the spill to ground movement, which its report described as an “active landslide,” causing the underground pipe to buckle. If charges are laid, the company could face fines of up to $1 million per day under Saskatchewan’s environmental protection, plus a $500,000 penalty under the federal Fisheries Act.

On Friday, just over a year after the 16-inch pipeline was shut down for routine maintenance after leaking oil for at least seven hours, Husky officials told reporters and analysts on a conference call that the two leak detection systems in place on the pipeline system did not fail.

During the conference call, Rob Peabody, appointed president and CEO of the Calgary-based company in December, five months after the spill, said pipelines are dynamic, meaning pressure and flow data fluctuate, and leak detection systems are designed to find “anomalies” in those data.

“It’s not that the systems failed; it’s just that there wasn’t an unambiguous message coming from the systems,” Peabody said.

The company recently received permission from the provincial government to repair, but not restart, the pipeline north of Maidstone, provided it implement a host of new safety requirements, including pipes with thicker walls, inclinometers to measure ground movement and fibre optic systems to measure strain on the line.

“We went through a … significant investigation of all of the incidents that occurred and we transferred the learnings, particularly on slope stability, over to all of our operations,” Husky chief operating officer Rob Symonds said on the call. Peabody added that the company is working to learn as much as possible from the incident.

It’s not that the systems failed; it’s just that there wasn’t an unambiguous message coming from the systems.