Canada Now Faced with Major Oil Spill

Enbridge Inc., a Canadian company based in Alberta, is now made responsible for 230,000 liters (roughly 1,450 barrels) of crude oil being spilled in the region northeast of Edmonton, the province's capital city.

Apparently, their Athabasca pipeline leaked the said amount of petroleum this past Monday.

Rumor has it that the incident was due to a pumping station coming up with a failure in one of its flange gaskets.

Company representatives argue that, although the spill is indeed significant quantitatively wise, there are no reasons to have either the general population or the country's official worry, as the leak occurred in an isolated area.

Therefore, they claim that no waterways or agricultural lands are to be in any ways affected by this incident, and that there is no need to start evacuating people.

According to Huffington Post, Darin Barter, spokesman for the Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) explained that: “There's absolutely no waterways, there's no water, there's no standing water, it's only dry land.”

He also added that “The company is actually on the scene and they're cleaning up the spill now. We'll remain there for as long as we need to be until our comfort in achieved in cleanup operations.”

The said pipeline is presently shut down, and Enbridge Inc. is waiting for permission from the ERCB to restart it.

Interestingly enough, this is not the first oil spill that the people of Alberta have to deal with this month.

Thus, quite a few days ago, one of the pipelines owned by Plains Midstream Canada also leaked around 475,000 liters (about 2,900 barrels) of oil.

Unfortunately, this first chronologically wise oil spill did take its toll on the environment, as the petroleum made its way into the Red Deer River and, from there on, it eventually reached the Gleniffer Lake.

Presently, local authorities and environmentalists are pushing for careful inspections of all the oil pipelines in Canada.