An Alberta oilfield services company has been issued a nearly $450,000 administrative penalty by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) for contraventions involving industrial sewage it was not authorized to receive, yet was still found to be improperly stored and used to generate profit for the company.
Terroco Industries Ltd., based in Red Deer, Alberta, was fined for contravening the province’s Oil and Gas Conservation Rules over a period in summer 2023 at its waste disposal facility in nearby Stettler.
The AER sets operational requirements for disposal facilities based on the type of waste that can be accepted for disposal. In this case, the facility stored 14,196 m³ of industrial sewage for 40 non-contiguous days. According to a source wastewater sample analysis provided to the investigator, PFAS was also recorded in the sewage.
The AER noted that the company also used a single-walled aboveground storage tank without a spill control device or leak detection to store the unauthorized load. Spill control devices are required at fluid transfer points when handling materials at fluid storage systems to recover spills and leaks and to prevent materials, such as wastewater in this case, from leaking or spilling into the environment.
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The AER investigation did not, however, find any evidence of a leak.
Additionally, the facility did not have a foundation designed for aboveground storage tanks to minimize the risk of the storage tank suffering from differential settlement, sub-grade movement and corrosion.
In a statement to AER, Terroco denied that there were attempts to misidentify the waste received for disposal, but would investigate whether others were attempting to mislead Terroco about the classification of the waste.
The company was also penalized for illegally generating revenue from its storage of the unauthorized waste.
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