BC Oil Regulator Let Oil Company Avoid Decomissioning Deadline For 4,300 Pipelines, Hid Their Decision
The British Columbia government quietly granted one of Canada’s biggest oil and gas companies an exemption for thousands of pipelines that should have been deactivated before a legal deadline, according to documents obtained under freedom of information legislation. In 2020, the BC Energy Regulator — then called the BC Oil and Gas Commission — exempted more than 4,300 of those pipelines operated by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (commonly known as CNRL) from the 18-month decommissioning requirements, according to documents unearthed by The Narwhal and the Investigative Journalism Foundation.
Major gas producers often operate hundreds or thousands of short pipelines that connect wells — including fracking wells — to larger pipeline networks that transport natural gas to buyers. When the wells dry up, those pipelines are no longer needed. B.C. law requires inactive pipelines to be fully decommissioned 18 months after they become inactive — a measure to prevent environmental damage and leaks as pipelines gradually decay. The exemption given to CNRL is valid until 2028 and applied both to inactive pipelines that had not been decommissioned and proactively to pipelines that would become inactive during that period. The regulator’s decision was never made public.
According to the documents, in October 2022, a BC Energy Regulator official flagged an apparent problem with a CNRL pipeline while inspecting oil and gas sites in northeast B.C., noting, “This pipeline may fall under the exemption given to CNRL for over 4,000 pipelines that are not compliant in regard to deactivation.” The regulator, a provincial agency largely funded by the oil and gas industry, declined an interview request. In an unsigned email in response to questions, the regulator said the exemption is part of an agreement it made with CNRL to gradually decommission the 4,300 pipelines across the province.
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https://thenarwhal.ca/b-c-quietly-allowed-an-oil-and-gas-giant-to-sidestep-rules-for-more-than-4300-pipelines/