2 Alberta companies ordered to pay $550K over OHS violations related to welders' deaths

Two Alberta companies have admitted to violating provincial occupational health and safety rules over a workplace explosion that killed two men at an oil and gas site north of Edmonton in 2022. 

The companies have been ordered to pay more than half a million dollars in fines and penalties, with most of the money going toward safety awareness and education initiatives.

Welders Greg Podulsky, 29, and Darcy Schwindt, 47, were working on top of a tank on Nov. 12., 2022, when an explosion occurred within a tank storage facility, fatally injuring them.

Tamarack Valley Energy Ltd. and Peace Pipefitting Inc. each pleaded guilty to one count of violating Alberta's OHS Act on Wednesday in the Slave Lake Court of Justice.

Justice Robert Marceau accepted a joint submission from the companies, which included fines and creative sentences. 

Tamarack must pay $500,000, with most of the money going toward workplace safety initiatives and programming run by CAREERS: The Next Generation Foundation, a non-profit that works with Alberta youth, Energy Safety Canada, a safety organization, and Threads of Life, a charity that supports people affected by workplace injuries, illnesses and deaths.

Brian Schmidt, Tamarack Energy's CEO, said his company has supported the workers' families by funding scholarships and marked the deaths within the company with a moment of silence at work last year. 

Schmidt said dealing with these tragedies has been the most difficult experience yet for his Calgary company.

"We're a small company and there are not a ton of employees, so when something like this happens, it's quite traumatic," he said Friday in an interview. 

He also said it's important for the industry to do what it can to support the welders' families and share learnings with other companies.

"We changed their lives permanently," he said.

Peace Pipefitting must pay a $50,000 penalty, $30,000 of which will go toward programming at Threads of Life. 

The company, which did not respond to a request for comment, has also been placed on enhanced regulatory supervision for two years.

Charlene Nahamko, Podulsky's mother, said she wore a sweatshirt bearing a photograph of her son to court this week.

"I wanted them to know he wasn't just a contractor," she said. 

She said it was shocking to learn more about the circumstances of her son's death but becoming involved with Threads of Life has helped her carry her sadness and anger in a different way.

"It's time for us to put that behind us and move forward with Greg's legacy and push with the safety and the education," she said.

Schwindt's family members said in a written statement shared with CBC News that they are relieved to finally have closure on the investigation and are happy to see fines go toward educating students and preventing similar tragedies. 

"We are looking forward to moving forward and hope that Darcy will be remembered not for the accident that took his life, but for the amazing son, brother, uncle and friend he was to all of us," the family members said.

According to a spokesperson for Occupational Health Safety, Voltegic Energy Services Ltd., which was also charged last year over this incident, is scheduled to be sentenced May 28. 

Charges against a numbered company were stayed last year. 

In 2024, 203 people died because of workplace injury or illness in Alberta — up from 165 in 2023.