Americas News
WFS Ordered to Pay in Lac Megantic Cleanup Efforts
The Quebec government has ordered World Fuel Services Corp. [NYSE:INT] (WFS), along with other companies involved in the train crash that devastated the town of Lac Megantic earlier this month, to pay for cleanup efforts, Reuters reports.
"The citizens of Quebec are not the ones that will have to pay for this," said Quebec Environment Minister Yves-Francois Blanchet.
The order names Western Petroleum Company; Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway Ltd (MMA), a unit of Chicago-based Rail World Inc.; and Montreal, Maine & Atlantique Canada Cie, as well as WFS.
The government estimates that about 5.7 million litres of light crude leaked from the rail cars, and Blanchet said cleanup is still ongoing, with no estimate available yet of how much it will cost.
"We are in unknown territory," he said.
"We don't know exactly how long it will take, but we do know the full restoration will be done."
The July 6 crash killed 47 people and destroyed much of the town centre.
The train was carrying oil from the Bakken shale field in the U.S. state of North Dakota to an Irving Oil refinery in New Brunswick, Canada.
