An “exhaustive” RCMP audit to track down two tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer unaccounted for at a West Coast bulk chemical terminal has found the discrepancy existed only on paper.
The RCMP’s E Division reported Tuesday that it’s found “no evidence of theft or other criminal involvement” in the inventory discrepancy at Kinder Morgan’s facilities.
“The most reasonable explanation is that the discrepancy can be attributed to errors within administrative processes,” the Mounties said in a release, noting there was “a high level of security was in place throughout the process of manufacture, transport and storage” of the fertilizer.
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RCMP’s investigation team on the fertilizer file included investigators from the Vancouver 2010 Joint Intelligence Group, Public Works Canada’s forensics accounting management group and Natural Resources Canada.
Their investigation included “in excess of 200 interviews” with people who had come in contact with the bagged fertilizer in question at “various points in its transport and storage.”
Audits were also conducted at the Surrey-Fraser and North Vancouver docks, as well as at offices in Edmonton, Calgary and Salt Lake City, RCMP said.
The RCMP’s findings follow a Dec. 31 call from the Canadian offices of Kinder Morgan, a Texas-based fuel and chemical transport firm that operates bulk chemical terminals on the coast and a fuel and crude oil terminal near Edmonton.
The company had 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.
Later 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.”
RCMP said Jan. 6 that they were “satisfied that no product is missing,” but 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 Jan. 15, the RCMP said its auditors “have not been able to confirm Kinder Morgan’s conclusions,” which led it to launch a wider-ranging audit.
Due to ammonium nitrate’s known use in improvised explosives, the federal government in June 2008 added new regulations on the sale of the product.
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, in which domestic attackers detonated a combination of ammonium nitrate and motor fuel and killed over 150 people.
