Achi news desk-
The chairman of the board of the Alberta Energy Regulator says he is stepping down in September.
David Goldie says it is a good time to take on new challenges as he approaches the five years of the protection agency.
Goldie joined the AER in 2019 when the board was given the mandate to reform the organization’s governance arrangements and make it simpler.
He says he is satisfied with where the regulator is now and is on a good path forward.
The AER has been criticized for how it notified the public and local First Nations about the release of millions of liters of oil sands from wastewater from Imperial Oil’s Kearl mine in northern Alberta in 2022.
A third party report commissioned by the agency determined that the regulator had followed its rules, but that those rules were significantly lacking.
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After that report was released in September, Goldie said Kearl’s situation was unusual because it wasn’t an emergency like a sudden pipe break, but a leak that happened over time.
He promised that the regulator would be more proactive in the future regarding communication with the residents of the area.
“The bar has to move here,” he said.
“There is a need to report a much larger range of incidents. It is no longer good enough to say that the operator is responsible and assume that he has fulfilled his duty.”
& copy 2024 The Canadian Press
