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Second Worker Dies After Explosion in Canada’s Oilsands As Safety Fears Mount

Dave Williams is the seventh to have died in workplace accidents in the Albertan oilsands in recent years.
Nexen Energy CEO Fang Zhi speaks to reporters on the site of an oilspill. Photo via the Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh

Dave Williams is the seventh person to die on the job in Alberta's oil and gas industry in the last five years.

Advocates worry that, in an industry being ravaged by layoffs, the culture of "whatever it takes" is putting lives at risk.

Williams, a 30-year-old Nova Scotian, succumbed to his injuries Monday in an Edmonton hospital. His death follows that of another oilsands worker, 52-year-old Drew Foster, who was killed in the same January 15 explosion at Nexen's Long Lake facility near Fort McMurray.

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The two men were changing valves on a compressor as part of regular maintenance when the explosion happened. The incident, which Nexen Energy CEO Fang Zhi called the company's "worst nightmare," is raising new questions about workplace safety in the oilsands.

Severely burned in the blast, Williams was rushed to the burn unit at an Edmonton hospital. His cousin told the Cape Breton Post he had third degree burns and was in an induced coma. On January 17, the Post reported that his immediate family was at his side.

Related: Whistleblowers Think They Know Why Canadian Pipelines Are Exploding

On Tuesday, Nexen confirmed his death in a news release, expressing "deepest condolences to the impacted families."

Since 2011, at least seven workers in Alberta's oil and gas industry, including Williams and Foster, have died from workplace incidents.

Christine Wronko, a spokesperson for the province of Alberta, told VICE News that between 2012 and 2014, there were four workplace deaths in the Alberta oilsands. The final number may be higher, as the province has not yet compiled the numbers for 2015.

According to the National Energy Board (NEB), which is in charge of pipelines that cross provincial boundaries, there was one additional death, between 2008 and 2015, of an employee at an Alberta pipeline company.

That person died in April, 2011 at a Nova Gas Transmission pipeline in Grande Prairie, Alberta. According to a report supplied to VICE News by the NEB, the unnamed employee was working for a contractor and left the job site in a company truck. He drove onto the highway and stopped to clean his boots. A second truck didn't see him and backed into him.

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Nova Gas is owned by TransCanada, the company hoping to build the controversial Energy East pipeline.

And if you include Alberta's mining and petroleum development sector, another 23 people died from workplace incidents in that industry between 2012 and 2014, according to the provincial regulator.

Drew Foster's family is remembering him as a caring father and husband who was "always smiling and laughing," according to a GoFundMe page created following his death. His Facebook page reveals a man with a sense of humour who described long days working in the Alberta oil patch while looking forward to seeing his family on off days.

As of Wednesday, the GoFundMe page had well over doubled its $10,000 CAD goal.

Photos on Williams' Facebook show him riding BMX bikes, tubing on a lake and displaying fish he caught. He was a tradesman, specifically a journeyman millwright, at the Nexen facility, and lived in Fort McMurray.

CNOOC Limited, which owns Nexen, has "an extremely high standard of safety," Nexen's senior vice president of Canadian operations Ron Bailey said in a press conference following the Long Lake explosion.

"Our motto at CNOOC is that nothing is so important it can't be done safely," the company's CEO Fang Zhi said in a press conference after the explosion.

"One of the darkest days in Nexen's history."

He called it "one of the darkest days in Nexen's history."

January's explosion happened only six months after a Nexen pipeline burst in July, and only two months after Nexen laid off 60 staff at the Long Lake facility in the midst of turmoil in Alberta's energy sector.

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The entire Alberta economy is in dire straits, with the price of oil dipping below $28 a barrel last week — the lowest since 2003. Oil and gas companies and those in adjacent industries have laid off workers in droves, leading to 63,000 job losses in Alberta in the first eight months of 2015.

The Nexen incident immediately reminded Alberta workplace safety advocate Mark Moroney of his son.

"It's always disheartening for me because I immediately go back to the experience of losing my son, and the impact it had on my family, even today," Moroney told VICE News in response to the explosion.

Moroney became an advocate after his 27-year-old son, Jason, lost his life in an Alberta pipeline accident in 2007, a couple weeks before Christmas.

"He was crushed to death. He was a pipefitter caught between two pipes."

"He was crushed to death. He was a pipefitter caught between two pipes."

The reason for his death, Moroney said, was a workplace culture of "whatever it takes."

He described the company, Cenovus, formerly known as Encana, as having an "injury-tolerant culture," but he said the company changed its outlook and hasn't had a fatality since then.

Moroney told VICE News he believed that culture combined with layoffs due to the economic downturn could "absolutely" contribute to more workplace deaths in the industry.

The Alberta government, the Alberta Energy Regulator and Nexen itself are all investigating the Long Lake plant explosion, but won't say when it would be finished. The RCMP determined the incident was not suspicious or criminal in nature and are not investigating.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson with the Alberta Energy Regulator said the investigation into Nexen's pipeline that burst in July in northern Alberta, spilling 31,500 barrels of oil into the wilderness, is ongoing with no deadline in sight.

Follow Hilary Beaumont on Twitter: @HilaryBeaumont