Picture of the release at the Rush Lake 2 Facility on July 10, 2025. (Anonymous Post/Facebook)

By Austin Mattes

No end timeline

‘It’s been a waste of our time’: Community dissatisfied with Cenovus Rush Lake open house while uncontrolled well release continues

Jul 11, 2025 | 4:33 PM

Residents and community leaders said they left Thursday’s open house in Paynton feeling frustrated and unheard, more than two months after the Rush Lake 2 thermal facility uncontrolled well release began.

The open house, hosted by Cenovus Energy at the RM of Paynton Office gymnasium on July 10, featured information cards on easels explaining the incident, with company representatives available to answer questions. But many attendees said it failed to meet the standard of meaningful consultation or accountability.

“This was not a community consultation, this was a melee of a bunch of people with name tags and no face or no talk or no anything,” said Crystal Miller, president of the Midwest Indigenous Society in Lloydminster.

“We are very, very disheartened, very disappointed about how this has went. It’s been a waste of our time,” she added.

One of the information cards provided at the open house. (Austin Mattes/BattlefordsNOW Staff)

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One of the information cards provided at the open house. (Austin Mattes/BattlefordsNOW Staff)

The Midwest Indigenous Society represents off-reserve First Nations, non-status, Métis, and Southern Inuit Peoples within an 80-kilometre radius of Lloydminster. As one of five national Indigenous organizations recognized by the federal government through the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, Miller said her organization is still waiting for meaningful engagement.

“We’re talking about lasting impacts, groundwater, wildlife, people, our river. And to date, we have not been consulted and nobody is getting consulted here,” she said.

Residents who attended the open house voiced similar frustration, telling battlefordsNOW they were ‘expecting more’ and felt like the information provided was a repeat of earlier updates.

Online, community members also criticized the event structure. One social media comment referred to the open house as a ‘divide and conquer tactic’, while another said, ‘People just want answers. We know they’re doing all they can, no one questions that. We just need to know the truth.’

No end in sight

Cenovus has been battling the release since May 7 and shut down its Rush Lake 1 and 2 thermal facilities for the ‘foreseeable future’. The release originates from an 8-year-old pad installed in 2018 at the Rush Lake 2 facility. So far, 15 of the 16 wells on the pad have been ‘killed’, but one remains uncontrolled, and there is still no timeline for when it will be stabilized. Due to the cease of production, Cenovus is losing an estimated 16,000 barrels of oil per day from the facilities.

Senior operations manager for the Upstream Division in Lloydminster, Clayton Ulrich told reporters in a brief press conference prior to the open house, that the company is trying everything they can, including using heavy brine fluids, barytes, cement, and drilling rigs in an effort to stop the release.

“We’re still going through a thorough investigation to understand it. We feel that we have a casing leak for sure on location, but it’s been very, very difficult to work through that process with eight pairs (of wells) on site,” Ulrich said.

Some of the slides provided at the open house. (Austin Mattes/BattlefordsNOW Staff)

Ulrich also acknowledged the company’s failure to communicate with the public in the early days of the incident.

“We realized that we needed to get out to the public. We didn’t do it soon enough. We absolutely understand that. All I can say is that we were focused on the response and the people in the immediate area,” he said.

Health and Environmental Concerns

Residents have raised concerns about health impacts, including headaches and dizziness, believed to be linked to hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) emissions from the release. Ulrich said the ‘muddy, silty water’ surfacing from the site traps vapour molecules containing H₂S, creating a strong odour in the area.

Hourly concentrations of H₂S have ranged from 11 to 510 parts per billion. Cenovus maintains that these levels are not harmful, and ongoing water testing in the surrounding areas has not revealed any safety risks to date.

Some of the slides provided at the open house. (Austin Mattes/BattlefordsNOW Staff)

“We’re sharing that information with the Ministry of Energy and resources as well as the raw data as well as they’ve been out in the community with their drones and their air monitoring systems to take their readings to make sure that our readings are accurate and they’re matching,” Ulrich said.

Some of the slides provided at the open house. (Austin Mattes/BattlefordsNOW Staff)

But for many, the answers remain unsatisfying, especially in light of photos and reports circulating of bubbling holes in nearby fields. When questioned, Ulrich said he had not seen such evidence but would be interested in investigating further.

Submitted photo of a local pasture in the area with bubbling holes in the ground, although it’s not known exactly when these holes appeared.

Looking Ahead

Despite having over 100 workers on-site daily and multiple containment efforts underway, the cause of the release remains uncertain. Even though Ulrich said a well casing failure is suspected, he stressed that there has been no indication of improper well installment being the cause.

“We have a very extensive integrity program and we check our wells consistently. There was no indication, and we didn’t see anything flagging on the alarms. We didn’t see anything out of the ordinary,” he explained.

For Indigenous leaders like Miller and concerned residents in the area, the situation has highlighted a deeper issue – a lack of genuine dialogue.

“I believe this is set up a certain way so that there’s no one person taking credibility or no one person giving guidance. Midwest Indigenous Society is planning on having an actual consultation meeting and we invite Cenovus to come to this meeting to actually engage the people in Lloydminster,” Miller said.

Cenovus is responding to community inquiries through a phone line at 1-877-697-4480.

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Austin.mattes@pattisonmedia.com

On X: @AustinMattes