We all have a stake in the energy industry’s environmental problems
By Paul Marck
News this week of dead ducks in oil sands tailings ponds again has overshadowed a key finding in the Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico oil-spill disaster: that the wrong kind of cement was used trying to seal the wildcat, out-of-control well that spewed billions of barrels of crude into the sea from April to August.
In the case of the Macondo well failing in the Gulf, the revelation that deep-water drilling partner Halliburton applied the wrong cement speaks to assertions from BP, the much-pilloried operator of the well, that the biggest oil spill in U.S. history was a shared responsibility.
In the unfortunate oil sands incident, about 350 ducks died in the Mildred Lake tailings pond owned by Syncrude, and small numbers in ponds and properties owned by Suncor and Shell when freezing rain dropped the migrating waterfowl from the sky.
Both dead ducks and the Gulf disaster speak of much the same thing: a failure of technology, ultimately a human failure in coming to grips with an unforeseen, yet not altogether unpredictable problem encountered in extracting a natural resource from the earth. In the BP Gulf disaster we can point fingers, but it will take years of legal wrangling to conclude who is blame.
In the case of Alberta’s tailings ponds, the ensuing uproar — only three days after Syncrude paid a $3-million fine over a 2008 incident in which 1,600 ducks died in its tailings pond — there can be no doubt that both the federal and 
provincial governments will come down hard with new regulations governing the environmental performance of the oil sands. I see tank farms or some other expensive engineered solution being brought to bear to eradicate the environmental safety hazard to wildlife for once and for all. Whatever the answer, it will cost billions and industry will have to quietly do the big gulp, because it is obvious that the old measures simply have not done the job.
But the oil sands environmental issues are not a single-company or isolated industry problem. Government and industry agreed on resolution measures that have not stood the test. And society? Well, everybody who drives a car, takes the bus, flies an airliner or uses fossil fuels to heat their home are complicit. Show me somebody who rides a horse, uses a wood stove and wears clothing that can be traced to a manufacturer without a carbon footprint and perhaps that person is blameless. But the rest of us, including the eco-warriors, live in glass houses.
So when you gas up the family sedan this weekend, remember that you are part of the same problem that you want industry and government to fix. And if you are inclined to gather a lynch mob to get the villains, save yourself some rope too.
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