First Nation Takes Fight With Oil-Sands Giant to Shareholders

Robert Tuttle, Bloomberg News

An Imperial Oil Ltd. refinery near the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, on Tuesday, May 25, 2021. Enbridge Inc. said it will continue to ship crude through its Line 5 pipeline that crosses the Great Lakes, despite Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer's order to shut the conduit. Photographer: Cole Burston/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- An indigenous community in Alberta’s oil-sands region submitted a proposal to Imperial Oil Ltd. shareholders that would require the company to disclose the financial effect of the energy transition.

Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation’s proposal, scheduled to be voted on Tuesday at Imperial’s shareholder meeting, would require the company to determine the effects of different transition scenarios on its asset-retirement obligations, including future reclamation costs. The proposal is being made on behalf of shareholder Leanne Baer.

The proposal was drafted after wastewater seeped from a tailings area and a wastewater pond in May 2022 and February 2023 at Imperial’s Kearl oil-sands mine. Local indigenous communities criticized the company for failing to adequately disclose the nature of the spills until months after the first incident.

The leak and Imperial’s response “raise serious questions about Imperial’s ability to manage the risk of long-liability assets like tailings ponds as well as its commitment to transparency,” according to the proposal.

The conflict is the latest between Canada’s oil and gas industry and indigenous communities, whose traditional territories are often close to production sites and pipelines. Indigenous communities need to know that oil-sands producers will pay to clean up toxic tailings ponds and other polluted sites when when the crude they produce is no longer in demand, Chief Allan Adam said in a phone interview.

“This puts all of the oil-sands players on notice,” he said. “This is the start of a new way of raising concerns. It’s a new way of doing things.”

Imperial opposes the proposal.

“Calculating asset retirement obligations as per the resolution presented would produce a set of arbitrary, uncertain and hypothetical views of the future rather than the thoughtful, fact-based approach used to produce asset retirement obligation estimates that are aligned with legal and regulatory requirements,” the company said its proxy.

Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation isn’t a shareholder in Imperial, but does business with the company, Adam said.