Two tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer from a West Coast bulk chemical terminal are still considered unaccounted for, although Vancouver and Surrey RCMP aren’t yet suggesting foul play.
The RCMP’s report Friday follows a Dec. 31 call from the Canadian offices of Texas-based fuel and chemical transport firm Kinder Morgan, which operates bulk chemical terminals on the West Coast and a fuel and crude oil terminal near Edmonton.
The company at the time reported a “possible discrepancy” in its count of bags of ammonium nitrate in storage in Surrey, RCMP said Jan. 6. The company had shipped 6,000 one-tonne bulk bags of the fertilizer from Alberta to its North Vancouver site in the fall of 2009, then moved the product to its Surrey facility in late December.
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Later on Jan. 6, however, RCMP said they were told by Kinder Morgan officials that the source of the discrepancy was a “clerical inventory error” and that “all product is accounted for and nothing is missing.”
Although RCMP said Jan. 6 that they were “satisfied that no product is missing,” they added that investigators from Surrey and Vancouver would still meet with company representatives Jan. 7 “to review the documentation and source of the discrepancy.”
Then on Friday (Jan. 15), the RCMP said its auditors “have not been able to confirm Kinder Morgan’s conclusions.”
RCMP said Friday they’ll continue to work to determine “whether any product is in fact missing, and if so, what happened to it.”
No information to date shows evidence of any theft or criminal wrongdoing, the Mounties said.
Thus, the RCMP said its threat level for the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver and Whistler remains at “low.” The RCMP also said it “does not intend to adjust its threat level for the V2010 Games as a result of this investigation.”
Due to the chemical’s known use in improvised explosives, the federal government in June 2008 placed new regulations on the sale of ammonium nitrate fertilizer.
Anyone who sells ammonium nitrate must now be registered with the explosives regulatory division of Natural Resources Canada. The product’s resale is also prohibited.
Among the most infamous fertilizer-bomb attacks was the destruction of a U.S. federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing over 150 people, for which domestic attackers detonated a combination of ammonium nitrate and motor fuel.
