EFLO Energy Yukon Ltd. ordered to clean up Kotaneelee fuel spill

The company that owns the Kotaneelee gas processing plant on the Yukon/N.W.T. border has been ordered to clean up a recent petroleum spill that covered an area roughly 180 square meters, but the incident has territorial environmentalists worried that remote sites in the territory, which are often unmanned, aren't being properly monitored.

Houston-based EFLO Energy Yukon Ltd. was ordered to stop fuel leaking from a building on the site after an employee with Yukon's Department of Environment spotted the leak Friday. 

"There's a small creek that runs parallel to the plant, south of the property," said Robert Thomson, the director of compliance monitoring and inspections with Energy Mines and Resources. "A CMI official walked on the north bank of that creek, all along the creek adjacent and past the plant and there was no apparent evidence of the spill reaching the watercourse."

The Kotaneelee gas processing plant, now dormant, was in operation from 1978 to 2012 and is linked to Fort Nelson, B.C., by pipeline. The site is accessible only by air or barge.

"It that [employee] hadn't been on site, and it was just serendipitous, we still wouldn't know that something, a leak, had occurred," said Lewis Rifkind, a mining analyst with the Yukon Conservation Society. "So we have to have stronger rules and regulations regarding remote monitoring of these facilities."

Thomson said the leak had been stopped by the time an official toured the site Sunday. Samples of the petroleum have been sent out for analysis.

EFLO must submit a written plan to clean up the spill by August 14 and submit a report confirming the work has been done by September 18.