Updated June 2024
Pipelines transport many different products that are used for a variety of purposes. For example, pipelines carry raw oilfield production to processing facilities and finished petroleum products to market. Regardless of the use, each pipeline must be closely monitored and maintained. Through the Pipeline Act, Pipeline Rules, and CSA Group standards, the AER regulates companies over the life cycle of their pipelines. By overseeing pipeline design, construction, operation, discontinuation, and abandonment, we help prevent incidents and hold companies accountable for their actions.
Under the industry performance program, we release an annual Pipeline Performance Report, which includes information about pipeline incidents. This year’s report covers the period from 2019 to 2023 and also includes a chart showing the ten-year trend (2014 through 2023) of incidents and total length.
The AER regulates oil and gas pipelines solely within the borders of Alberta. However, the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) regulates high-pressure gas utility pipelines in Alberta. We manage incidents and inspections for high-pressure gas utility pipelines on behalf of the AUC under a memorandum of understanding between the AUC and AER. The Canada Energy Regulator (CER) regulates oil and gas pipelines that cross provincial or international borders. For more information, see Pipelines in Alberta: what landowners need to know.
Although this report discusses only pipeline incidents and information relating to AER-regulated pipelines, information on AUC-regulated pipelines is available using the table and figure filters. The AER does not collect data on CER-regulated pipelines.
In 2023, there were about 46% fewer incidents than in 2014, even though the total pipeline kilometres (km) grew by 7% in the same period. The 2023 pipeline incident rate was 0.79 per 1000 km of pipeline compared with 1.57 in 2014.
This ongoing improvement in the incident rate is attributable to industry development and adoption of better pipeline practices and our continuous improvement of pipeline requirements and inspections that focus on educating industry about pipeline safety. However, oil and gas industry downturns have resulted in fewer operational pipelines, possibly contributing to the lower incident rate. The number of incidents has generally trended downwards over the past ten years, with a slight increase last year, this is likely due to increased industry activity. This increase, however, consists only of low-consequence incidents. Medium consequence incidents have remained essentially the same, and the number of high-consequence incidents has decreased steadily since 2014.
Figure 1 shows the relationship of incidents to pipeline kilometres for the past ten years.
2023 Highlights
- The number of pipeline incidents in Alberta increased 8.6% from 326 in 2022 to 354 in 2023. This increase consists of low-consequence incidents only. About 89% of incidents were rated as "low consequence," 9% as "medium consequence," and only 2% as "high consequence." See the glossary for the definition of incident consequence ratings.
- The number of pipeline incidents rated as a high consequence decreased slightly, from 8 incidents in 2022 to 7 in 2023.
- The high-consequence incidents involved pipelines carrying produced water (water from a wellbore produced as a by-product of oil and gas production), oil-well effluent (a mixture of unrefined oil, gas, and produced water), natural gas, or sour natural gas.
- The annual incident ratio increased to 0.79 incidents per 1000 km of regulated pipeline as compared to 0.73 in 2022. Produced water pipelines had an overall pipeline incident rate of 2.04, oil effluent pipelines had a rate of 2.09, sour natural gas pipelines had a rate of 0.54, and natural gas pipelines had a rate of 0.38.
- Internal corrosion remains the leading cause of pipeline incidents at 42%, down from 47% in 2022.
- About 67% of pipeline incidents involved no release of fluids or releases of one cubic metre (m3; about 6 barrels) or less.
- The largest release of fluids in 2023 was 2600 m3 of non-fresh water (produced water). No wildlife or waterbodies were affected, the release was contained by topography in an isolated area.
- In 2023, there was a 17% decrease in pipeline incidents related to contact damage during ground disturbance (42 incidents in 2022 compared to 35 in 2023). While the decrease is encouraging, this is still an important focus area for the AER, and we are working with Utility Safety Partners (formerly Alberta One-Call) to educate and promote safe digging.
