CALGARY — Energy giant Enbridge Inc. is urging shareholders at its upcoming annual meeting to vote against a proposal calling on the company to do more to disclose the climate impact of its pipeline business.

The shareholder proposal filed by Investors For Paris, a group that aims to hold publicly traded companies accountable for their net-zero promises, calls on Enbridge to disclose the “Scope 3” or end-use emissions produced by the oil and natural gas it transports in its pipeline network.

“If a company’s financial viability is dependent on scope 3 emissions being released — as is the case with Enbridge — then it is critical that investors have a full and complete picture of these emissions,” the proposal states.

The term “Scope 3” refers to emissions that a company is indirectly responsible for, such as the greenhouse gases generated when a customer uses the company’s product.

Most major Canadian energy firms currently disclose the emissions they produce themselves in their day-to-day business operations, but have been far more reluctant to take accountability for end-use emissions, such as those produced when consumers burn fossil fuels in their cars.

Including Scope 3 emissions in their climate disclosures would massively increase the size of the carbon footprint that energy companies must report to investors and the public.

Enbridge itself currently discloses the Scope 3 emissions produced by its natural gas utility business, by tallying the emissions generated when customers burn natural gas to heat their homes. 

But it doesn’t provide an accounting of the end use of the fossil fuel products it transports in its pipeline business.

Duncan Kenyon, director of corporate engagement with Investors For Paris, said that’s a problem because shareholders need to know whether the company’s portfolio is aligned with a future that will increasingly depend on renewables and other forms of clean energy.

“Many shareholders actually understand that Scope 3 isn’t just a greenhouse gas reporting metric, it’s actually a trend metric showing where the company is going in terms of adopting and responding to the energy transition,” Kenyon said.

“It’s a metric that highlights the exposure risk of the company to energy transition.”

Scope 3 emissions are an increasing area of focus for shareholder proposals. In the past two years, according to a database by Ceres, an organization which tracks climate-related shareholder resolutions, more than 30 proposals related to Scope 3 disclosures have been brought forward at the general meetings of major North American publicly traded companies.

Investors for Paris brought a similar resolution to Enbridge’s annual meeting last year, at which time approximately 25 per cent of shareholders voted in favour of the company adopting more extensive Scope 3 disclosure practices.

In its response to this year’s proposal, Enbridge said it is currently unable to accurately and reliably track third-party use of the oil and natural gas it transports for customers. 

The company said it takes Scope 3 emissions seriously, and in 2021 began reporting the “emissions intensity” of the energy it transports via pipeline. But it said there have been no clear regulatory guidelines or widely accepted methodologies developed to report on end-use emissions from products that Enbridge moves, but doesn’t own.

“We will proceed with further enhancements to our Scope 3 reporting where accepted definitions for our business exist and decision-useful data is available,” the company said.

In urging shareholders to vote against the proposal, Enbridge also warned investors to be wary of environmental activists who acquire shares in a company in order to bring forward a proposal solely for the purpose of campaigning for change.

“Shareholder proposals have become part of the toolkit employed by certain environmental activists to gain publicity in pursuit of their objectives,” the company stated.

Enbridge’s annual general meeting will be held May 8.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 13, 2024.

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BURNABY, B.C. — The Parkland fuel refinery in Metro Vancouver is set to resume operations Sunday, seven weeks after an “unplanned issue” forced it to shut down.

A statement on Parkland’s website says crews will begin the process by turning on the main air blower for the heat system at the facility in Burnaby, B.C.

The company says this “essential step” is expected to produce “periods of elevated flaring, and some potential for odours, noise and smoke.”

Once the facility is up and running, Parkland says it will move into the next phase of its operations by starting to feed crude oil into the refinery.

The company says it’s working closely with the community and regulatory bodies, and there will be continuous, independent air monitoring during the restart process.

The unplanned incident on Jan. 21 blanketed parts of Metro Vancouver with a heavy stench and caused more than 100 complaints from local residents.

Parkland had issued an advisory on its website two days beforehand, saying people who live nearby may notice noise and “higher-than-usual flare” from the facility.

Metro Vancouver monitors emissions of particulates, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide from the Parkland refinery, and the district told the public that air quality objectives for the contaminants were not exceeded during the incident.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 8, 2024.

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CALGARY — A hearing panel for Alberta’s energy regulator has upheld two orders against a company that had thousands of inactive oil and gas wells seized last year.

The regulator transferred control of more than 6,000 wells, pipeline segments and other facilities to the Orphan Well Association in September 2023, citing AlphaBow Energy’s failure to comply with the two orders.

An order issued in March 2023 called for AlphaBow to demonstrate reasonable care and measures at its sites.

Three months later, the Alberta Energy Regulator ordered the company to suspend its licences and sites over what it said was a failure to comply with the earlier order.

AlphaBow’s requests for regulatory appeals were granted, and a public oral hearing was held late last year. 

In a news release announcing its decision, the hearing panel says it found that the regulator did not breach procedural fairness in issuing the orders and that it did not exercise its discretion to issue the orders in a manner that was unreasonable.

AlphaBow was not immediately able to provide a response.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 28, 2024.

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VICTORIA — The federal government says the final offshore oil and gas permits for Canada’s West Coast have been relinquished.

A news release from the office of Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson says the relinquishment came from Chevron Canada, which has given up its 23 offshore permits along the coast of British Columbia as of Feb. 9.

A spokeswoman from Wilkinson’s office says that represents the last of the 227 offshore oil and gas permits for British Columbia’s coastal waters.

The release says giving up the oil and gas permits in Pacific waters fulfils a condition in the federal government’s commitment to an Indigenous-led conservation initiative that received a pledge of $800 million in support from Ottawa two years ago. 

In April 2023, Chevron Canada said it was voluntarily relinquishing 19 offshore oil and gas permits within protected wildlife areas on B.C.’s West Coast.

The permitting area given up by Chevron at that time was estimated at 5,700 square kilometres and overlapped parts of federal marine protection areas off B.C.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 21, 2024.

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Seven Alberta First Nations have banded together to seek answers as industry and government move on billion-dollar plans to inject and store millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases underneath or adjacent to their traditional lands. 

“We don’t know how pumping carbon underground will affect our lakes, our rivers — even our underground reservoirs,” said councillor Michael Lameman of Beaver Lake Cree Nation, one of the members of the Treaty 6 working group. 

“(Industry’s) been vague, not very forthcoming.”

The working group includes Heart Lake First Nation, Beaver Lake Cree Nation, Whitefish Lake First Nation, Kehewin Cree Nation, Frog Lake First Nation, Cold Lake First Nations and Onion Lake Cree Nation. Saddle Lake Cree Nation is observing the group.

“There’s lots to be checked as far as the project relates to both the safety of the environment and the communities,” said Darryl Steinhauer, consultation co-ordinator for Whitefish Lake.

“The (carbon capture) project is inclusive of eight Nations where people are not only practising their treaty rights but living there day to day. Safety is a big concern.”

Industry says it’s doing its best.

“We are in the early stages of consultation with communities,” said a statement from Kendall Dilling, head of Pathways Alliance, which represents 95 per cent of Alberta’s oilsands production. “We are dedicated to working together with Treaty 6 First Nations and ongoing discussions will take place in a confidential manner.”

A Pathways spokeswoman said the first project-related applications are expected by the end of next month. 

“Focusing initially on the proposed right-of-way for the CO2 transportation network, Pathways now intends to target filing applications under the Public Lands Act in (the first quarter),” Jerrica Goodwin said in an email.

Indigenous communities, who watch the promotional TV ads and hear the support from politicians, say they feel the momentum building.

“We’re hearing a lot of concerns,” said Steinhauer. “(Councillors) are getting called in the evening about it, saying ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ ” 

The bands would like to know. 

“The Pathways Alliance has not provided our First Nations with any reports or data assessing the potential risks associated with the storage of carbon adjacent to and beneath our reserve lands,” says an Oct. 13 letter from the First Nations to Pathways.

Pathways Alliance is proposing a gargantuan scheme to capture carbon dioxide from 13 oilsands facilities, pipe it hundreds of kilometres south and pump it from at least 16 injection wells to more than a kilometre underground. There, porous limestone underneath a layer of solid rock salt is to hold it fast.

The first phase is budgeted at $16.5 billion and will stash up to 12 million tonnes of carbon a year by 2030. Depending on who’s measuring, that’s between 12 and 17 per cent of the oilsands’ annual emissions. 

Advocates say projects such as the Boundary Dam power plant in Saskatchewan and Shell’s Quest project outside Edmonton prove carbon capture and storage can work. Quest injects about a million tonnes of carbon dioxide underground annually.

Others say leakage — especially through poorly sealed oil and gas wells or into groundwater — remains a concern. 

Alberta’s underground carbon tank is vast. A Pathways map suggests its proposed storage hub covers thousands of square kilometres of northeastern Alberta. 

That map does not show any reserve lands or First Nations communities, although there are 11 such areas within or adjacent to it. 

“The map of the proposed sequestration hub … is premised on the notion that our First Nations and our reserve lands either do not exist or we simply don’t matter,” says the letter from the First Nations.

The approval process for the project also raises concerns. 

Renato Gandia, spokesman for the Alberta Energy Regulator, said the agency will only review facilities that capture carbon, pipelines that transport it and wells that inject it. It won’t consider what’s injected or how it behaves after injection. 

“A carbon sequestration tenure or agreement from the government of Alberta is required if a company wants to apply for a CCS project,” he wrote in an email.

Permits for a carbon capture and storage project are granted directly by the energy minister. While applications require monitoring and cleanup plans, the regulations do not mention public input. 

“It appears that the regulatory regime is going to consist of a series of isolated, low-level regulatory applications,” said Clayton Leonard, lawyer for several of the First Nations in the working group.

Pore space under reserve lands is owned by First Nations. Leonard said it’s unlikely that carbon dioxide injected into Crown land can be kept from seeping under reserves. 

“I don’t think you can talk about pore space with that neat boundary to it.”

Leonard said information gleaned from public meetings held in non-reserve communities suggests injection wells will be located close to reserves.

“That really raises our level of concern.” 

Meanwhile, Steinhauer said he continues to face questions from band members every day.

“Grocery shopping isn’t as quick any more as it used to be.” 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 18, 2024.

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An Alberta power generator has been fined for running a plant for months without regulatory approval.

The Alberta Utilities Commission has fined Avex Energy nearly a quarter-million dollars for running a natural gas-fired generator while bypassing regulatory tests for safe and unobtrusive operation. 

“They have not been approved to operate,” said commission spokesman Geoff Scotton.

According to an agreed statement of facts, officials from what was then Avila Energy approached the commission with plans to build a generating station in the County of Stettler in the summer of 2019. Avila already held permits for operating a natural gas field in that area of central Alberta and planned to use that gas to fuel the plant.

“On the basis of those discussions, Avila believed that no additional approval was required and proceeded on that basis,” the statement says.

The generator was built and fired up on April 23, 2021. 

The electricity, eventually reaching 3.5 megawatts, was sold to a bitcoin miner. Avila, which eventually turned into Avex Energy, planned to generate up to 10 megawatts.

By December, the commission began to receive noise complaints from residents, some as far as nearly three kilometres away. 

“The complainants stated that they first noticed the noise in May 2021 and that the noise became increasingly problematic in October 2021, when the additional generating capacity was added,” the agreed statement of facts says. 

The utilities commission investigated the noise complaints and found Avex was unlicensed. 

Investigators found Avex had not applied for a permit to build the plant. The company had not conducted a noise assessment as required, nor did it receive required environmental approvals. 

The Red Willow power plant was shut Dec. 22, 2021. It remains closed. 

Avex was “co-operative, forthright and responsive,” during the investigation, the commission said in a summary of the settlement.

The total fine was $241,477. It was reduced 30 per cent because of the company’s response to the investigation. 

Commission spokesman Geoff Scotton says such infractions are unusual but do occasionally occur. 

“From time to time these situations are brought to our attention.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2024.

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Alberta’s oilsands are releasing potentially hazardous compounds into the atmosphere at rates dozens of times higher than official estimates, newly published research suggests.

The authors say the massive releases of volatile organic compounds, separate from the industry’s climate-change-causing emissions, raise concerns about what those hundreds of complex, highly reactive chemicals are doing in the environment. 

“It’s difficult to know,” said John Liggio, an atmospheric scientist with Environment Canada who worked with a group from Yale University on the paper, which was published in the journal Science. “Some of these compounds could be toxic.”

Industry figures suggest the oilsands release about 68 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, over 10 per cent of all Canadian emissions. Liggio’s lab has suggested that figure could be closer to 100 million tonnes. 

But more is released than carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas. 

The current paper is the first to make field-based measurements of the release of what are called volatile organic compounds — “every molecule that has carbon as a backbone,” Liggio said. 

Previously, the release of those chemicals has been tracked using modelled estimates, exhaust stack measurements and a few measurements in the field.

“It’s really a mix of a bunch of different ways (industry) comes up with the number that they’ve reported to the national inventory,” Liggio said. 

Liggio’s team used 30 airplane overflights in the spring and summer of 2018 to sample and analyze what was in the air over a series of oilsands operations, open-pit and in situ. Those measurements found actual emissions to dwarf what has been reported.

Liggio’s study suggests volatile organic compounds are being released from the oilsands at rates that are anywhere from 20 to 63 times higher than the figures in the national pollutant inventory. The paper suggests those emissions from the oilsands are roughly equal to the entire output of such chemicals from everywhere else in Canada. 

The three largest sources — Syncrude’s Mildred Lake, Suncor and Canadian Natural Resources — emit anywhere between 200,000 and 500,000 tonnes of carbon in those chemicals annually. 

As well, Liggio and his team used lab experiments to measure how much volatile organic carbon was released during the drying of mature fine tailings, one of the processes used to reclaim tailings ponds. 

“We found that the (chemicals) were in fact being emitted when you dry (tailings),” he said. “In fact, more was emitted when you dry it.”

Liggio adds that air quality downwind of the oilsands remains within Canadian and Alberta guidelines. There are thousands of different kinds of carbon-based molecules released from energy production and all are highly reactive.

“All of these different hydrocarbons in the atmosphere react,” Liggio said. “They form things that are of concern.”

Such chemicals form contaminants such as fine particulates, which can lead to heart and lung problems and are one of the leading causes of air pollution health impacts. They also create ozone, which can also cause respiratory issues. 

Liggio’s paper is similar in some ways to recent research that has used airborne measurements to find that official estimates of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are also being routinely and significantly underestimated by industry and government. Those airborne methods are gradually gaining favour. 

Not enough is known about what happens when those chemicals mix and react, said Liggio. Nor is it known whether they accumulate in the environment. 

“It’s difficult to know what the impact is right now,” he said. “There are thousands of chemicals.

“Some of them are (cumulative). I don’t know which ones that would be. 

“What this (study) really means is that probably some additional work is required.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 25, 2024

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CALGARY — Parkland Corp. has named veteran executive Michael Jennings to its board of directors as part of the company’s board renewal process.

The addition of the former HF Sinclair Corp. chief executive to the board is effective Feb. 10.

The move comes as New York-based activist investor Engine Capital LP calls for a complete board overhaul at the company.

Engine Capital, which holds a 2.5 per cent stake in Parkland, has been seeking changes at the company since last March, when it urged it to sell or spin off its Burnaby, B.C., refinery and become a pure play fuel and convenience retailer.

In a recent letter, Engine said it doesn’t believe Parkland’s current board should be responsible for its own refreshment process and that it should collaborate with its largest shareholders to reconstitute the board with directors who will “prioritize the interests of all shareholders.”

Two members of Parkland’s board, both of whom had been nominees of Simpson Oil, Parkland’s largest shareholder, stepped down at the end of last year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 23, 2024.

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. government has been asked to explain how a 1977 energy treaty with Canada would impact efforts to shut down the Line 5 cross-border pipeline.

A forthcoming Department of Justice brief will mark the Biden administration’s first official foray into the dispute between Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. and an Indigenous band in Wisconsin.

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals wants the brief by Feb. 8, when it will hear oral arguments from Enbridge and the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.

Both sides are appealing last year’s district court decision, which found Enbridge was trespassing on band territory and ordered Line 5 rerouted by June 2026.

Neither side was satisfied with the ruling: Bad River wants the contested 19-kilometre stretch shut down right away, while the company says it needs more time.

The U.S. has so far been largely silent on the little-known 47-year-old treaty, which both Enbridge and Ottawa have cited as a key reason why Line 5 must keep operating.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 22, 2024.

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CALGARY — Parkland Corp.’s largest shareholder will no longer have a seat on the fuel retailer’s board after the recent resignation of two board members.

The Calgary-based company announced on Dec. 31 the resignations of Simpson Oil nominees Michael Christiansen and Marc Halley from Parkland’s board of directors.

Parkland also says it is in discussions with Simpson about its shareholding in the company.

Simpson Oil is headquartered in the Cayman Islands and has been a Parkland shareholder since 2017.

Since 2022, when Parkland consolidated its ownership of Sol, a Caribbean fuel retailer formerly owned by Simpson Oil, Simpson has owned about 20 per cent of Parkland shares.

Going forward, Simpson Oil has waived its previously agreed-upon right to nominate two members to Parkland’s board.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 4, 2024.

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