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An Inquiry Into a Fatal Oil Sands Accident Won’t Look At What Actually Happened

In 2007, two Chinese workers were killed on the site of an Alberta oil sands project by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. A judge has ruled that a public inquiry should only look at how one of the workers was transported to hospital.
The Canadian Press Images/Larry MacDougal

An energy giant that commissioned an Alberta oil sands project where two Chinese workers were killed in 2007 has succeeded in limiting the scope of a public inquiry into the cause of their deaths.

But despite its efforts to quash the public inquiry, it is going forward, and this week the company could find itself under the microscope of yet another investigation by a provincial regulator.

The fatal accident happened on April 24, 2007 around 2:30 pm about 70 kilometers north of Fort McMurray, at the Horizon oil sands project owned by one of the largest independent crude and natural gas producers in the world, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL).

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CNRL Horizon asked contractor SSEC Canada to build 14 tanks on the Horizon site, an open pit oil sands mine that the company expected to produce 232,000 barrels of oil a day. As they were building a tank that day, workers heard loud bangs and pops, and the steel roof of the tank came crashing down on them, killing two and injuring five more.

CNRL and its contractor SSEC Canada never had a professional engineer look over the procedures for building the tanker roof, according to a report by Alberta's labor department released last week. As a result of this and other failures, the roof of the tanker collapsed without warning, killing and injuring a group of Chinese foreign workers below.

Related: What Trudeau's Liberal Victory Means for Canada's Oil Sands

One worker, 33-year-old electrical consultant Hongliang Lui, was crushed by falling steel when the tank roof collapsed, and died at the scene. Another, 27-year-old scaffolder Genbao Ge, died in the ambulance as he was rushed to hospital.

Following an application by CNRL, a judge ruled the scope of the inquiry would look at how Ge was transported to hospital, and nothing else.

"This was our last chance to get information, and frankly to get justice," Alberta Federation of Labor president Gil McGowan told the CBC. "To say that I'm frustrated by big oil companies winning again would be an understatement. I say that I'm actually outraged."

According to CBC News, CNRL had tried to stop a public inquiry into their deaths, arguing it was unnecessary to reexamine questions that had already been answered by an Alberta Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) investigation.

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SSEC Canada has pleaded guilty to failing to protect the workers. The contractor was fined $200,000 and had to pay $1 million to the Alberta Law Foundation, CBC reported. But the 29 charges against CNRL were stayed.

The labor department report — which was completed in September 2007 but only released last week — showed the workers were not at fault.

Instead the culprit was shoddy oversight by SSEC Canada and CNRL. On a list of other failures, the report found "the procedures for the erection of the roof support structure were not certified by a professional engineer and the specifications were not readily available to the workers responsible for the work. The workers were given only verbal instruction on the erection procedure."

Related: The Town That Hates Pipelines — How Canada's Energy Future Hit a Wall in Burnaby

And that engineering failure could trigger another investigation on top of the public inquiry.

The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA), which regulates the province's engineering and geoscience professions, is considering launching its own investigation into the incident, spokesperson Philip Mulder confirmed to VICE News.

APEGA investigations determine if unskilled or unprofessional practice, or a mix of the two, have occurred, Mulder said, and the file can then be referred to a disciplinary hearing. But disciplinary action isn't guaranteed. APEGA can, among other things, suspend licenses and permits and issue fines if it finds sanctions are necessary.

According to the labor department report, when the roof began to fall some of the 13 workers inside the tanker were able to escape, but Ge and Lui weren't so lucky.

The families of the workers received compensation for their deaths, but in the case of Ge's widow, it took more than a year for her and her six-year-old daughter to receive compensation due to an imposter who tried to steal the money, the Journal of Commerce reported. The widow's sister-in-law reportedly tried to receive the benefits.

Following the deaths, fellow workers at the Horizon site raised $110,000 for the families of the two workers.

Follow Hilary Beaumont on Twitter: @hilarybeaumont