New pipeline-incident reporting by the Alberta government has evoked clarification from a company portrayed unfavorably in one of its operator comparisons.
When Alberta Energy Regulator introduced the report on Feb. 21, Pres. and Chief Executive Officer Jim Ellis said it would improve transparency and “drive increased industry accountability.”
The report noted general improvement in pipeline safety, pointing out that incidents fell by 44% over the past 10 years as total pipeline length grew by 11%.
And it acknowledged that answering the question “Who are the poor performers?” isn’t easy.
“The common standard for reporting on pipeline performance is as a ratio of incidents/1,000 km of pipeline,” it said. “This provides an understanding of overall performance and is an important indicator, but it doesn’t tell us the full story.”
The top-ranked operator by that metric, Chinook Energy Inc. of Calgary, issued a statement clarifying what it called the “punitive and inaccurate rating” it received.
Chinook had one incident in 2016, a leak categorized by AER as “low consequence” during annual pressure-testing of a low-pressure pipeline in southern Alberta. At the time, Chinook had 1,300 km of pipeline under license and 880 km of operating pipeline in Alberta.
Since the leak, it has disposed of most of its producing properties in Alberta and now owns only 19.5 km of pipeline in the province. It was that total that AER used to calculate Chinook’s top-ranked 52.44 incidents/1,000 km of pipeline.
“Had the AER’s pipeline reporting analysis been calculated at the time of the incident,” the company said in its statement, “Chinook would have scored an 0.8 incident factor per 1,000 km of total pipeline.”
Still, the company commended the AER initiative and said it “is supportive of the improved pipeline performance mandate and the added public disclosure of safety and environmental incidents.”
AER’s pipeline report also ranked companies by total incidents, total high-consequence incidents, and total volume of product released.
The regulator plans similar reports covering in situ, mining (oil sands and coal), and oil and gas operations.