REGINA - Hundreds of workers at Regina's Co-op oil refinery complex will be returning to work after ratification of a tentative contract. The agreement brings an ends to a six-month labour dispute that began after refinery owner Federated Co-operatives Ltd. locked out more than 700 workers last December following a strike vote. The company says the new contract is a seven-year deal and that employees will return to work in the coming weeks. Unifor Local 594 had encouraged members to [Read more]

CALGARY - The number of orphan wells in British Columbia has more than doubled thanks to the failure of one oil and gas company. The BC Oil and Gas Commission says it has designated 401 wells and three facilities formerly owned by Calgary-based Ranch Energy as orphans, which means there is no owner willing or able to restore those sites. The provincial agency says the wells take B.C.'s list of orphan sites to a total of 770, although 56 of those sites are substantially restored. Ranch [Read more]

REGINA - The owner of Regina's Co-op oil refinery complex where workers have been locked out for more than six months says it has a tentative contract deal with the union. Federated Co-operatives Ltd. says the deal includes parts of the company's final offer and a return-to-work agreement. It says Unifor Local 594's bargaining committee has tentatively accepted the deal, which still needs to be ratified by workers. Workers were supposed to rally in front of the Saskatchewan legislature [Read more]

VANCOUVER - Coastal GasLink says it is ready to launch its summer construction program in British Columbia, which will see the first section of pipe buried in the ground next month. The company says in a statement that construction also begins this summer on a compressor and metering stations that will form anchor points along the 670-kilometre pipeline running from the Dawson Creek area to Kitimat. Work on the main compressor station is slated to begin in July and the company says [Read more]

EDMONTON - Shutting down a broad range of Alberta's environmental monitoring over pandemic fears wasn't necessary, says the head of a group responsible for such work. Most monitoring could have been done safely, says Jay White, president of the licence-granting Alberta Society of Professional Biologists. "We're trained to deal with dangerous, toxic biological hazards in our day-to-day work," White said Monday. "The virus is no different." Alberta's own chief scientist says he wasn't [Read more]