At a recent event in Vancouver, biologist and Peace Valley Environment
Association representative Diane Culling discussed the enormous
consequences of the proposed Site C Dam – including the flooding of
prime farmland at a time when the province faces major food security
challenges. Culling also pointed out that much of the electricity
generated from the project would go to fueling destructive shale gas
development in northeast BC, and, by extension, the Alberta Tar Sands. (3 min)
From the Alaska Highway News (Fort St. John) – June 8, 2011
by Ryan Lux
Applications have been submitted by two
energy companies to the Ministry of Forests, Land and Natural Resource
Operations, to pipe water out of the Williston Reservoir for use in
fraccing operations on the Montney shale gas play.
According to the OGC, Talisman Energy
and Canbriam are both seeking to withdraw 10,000 cubic metres of water
per day – 7,300,000 cubic meters per year in total – to provide water to
their various drilling sites through a network of pipelines.
Up to this point, both energy companies
have been depending on short-term water use permits, which allow
industry to draw water from surface sources and shallow wells. One
surface source, which has generated tension, is the Lynx Creek boat
launch where Talisman has been withdrawing 4,000 cubic meters per day.
The tension created by trucking water
out of the popular recreation spot will be eliminated, according to
Talisman spokesperson, Phoebe Buckland, if the company receives approval
to pipe the water from the Williston Reservoir.
“We’ve been using temporary permits
over the last couple of years through the OGC and now we’ve applied for
two permanent licenses for the Williston Reservoir, one to withdraw the
water and the other to construct a pipeline,” said Buckland.
“After reviewing our options we feel
that the this is the best solution, as the Williston Reservoir provides a
reliable source of water and the pipeline would reduce tanker traffic –
reducing the impact on residents and our greenhouse gas emissions at
the same time.”
If approved, the water would come from
the reservoir south of Hudson’s Hope and run to Talisman’s Beryl Prairie
Road facility, where it would be stored in pits and tanks until used
for fraccing operations.
Talisman plans to withdraw 3.6 million
cubic meters a year, a figure which Talisman claims represents only 0.01
per cent of the average yearly flow through the W.A.C. Bennett Dam.
Despite the fact that their proposed
water withdrawal only represents a fraction of the river’s flow,
Buckland explained her company plans to recycle almost all of the water
they use.
“Water management is something we take
very seriously and we are aware that fraccing requires large volumes of
water,” acknowledged Buckland, “We’re recycling close to 100 per cent of
the water to be used in future fracs.”
Buckland explained that following a frac, the water returns to the surface where Talisman captures it for re-use.
Even with assurances of solid water management, critics have raised concerns about Talisman’s proposal.
Sustained drought has placed a strain
on water levels in Williston Reservoir, which was four metres below
average in September 2010, a situation that forced BC Hydro to import
$200 million of electricity last year.
Ben Parfitt, of the Canadian Centre for
Policy Alternatives, explained what concerns him about the permanent
water licensing proposals is the prospect of locking public water
supplies into private companies for what could be decades.
Chief Roland Willson expressed concerns
over the consultation process: “As far as I’m concerned, the Oil and
Gas Commission should not be leading any consultation on water rights or
allocations in our territory,” Willson said. “That’s a job for
provincial water regulators. The other thing that really concerns me is
that when they finally send us information they neglect to mention that
Talisman is not alone in seeking to divert massive amounts of water out
of Williston Reservoir.
“In fact, there is at least one other
major water diversion proposal that has been filed with the provincial
government. If they want to present us with the ‘bigger picture’ they
need to give us all the information, not half of it.”
BC Hydro didn’t return calls by press
time to discuss whether or not the Crown Corporation would receive
compensation for the diverted water, which otherwise would be used to
produce electricity. At present, energy companies don’t pay for the
water they draw from surface sources and shallow wells.
Buckland said Talisman is confident
their proposal will meet provincial requirements and that the process
has engaged the public through consultation and awareness campaigns. To
date, Buckland couldn’t recall any water applications submitted by
Talisman that haven’t been approved.
Construction on the pipeline could
proceed as soon as this summer and be completed within several months,
pending regulatory approval.
Read original article
From the Globe and Mail and Canadian Press – June 12, 2011
From The New York Times – June 6, 2011
by David Jolly
PARIS — A British company said Wednesday that it would temporarily halt
the use of a controversial gas exploration technology after indications
that it might have set off two small earthquakes near a test well in
Lancashire, England.
The company, Cuadrilla Resources,
which is exploring for gas in shale formations deep underground, said
it would postpone hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations at the
Preese Hall site near Weeton.
“We take our responsibilities very seriously,” Mark Miller, the chief
executive of Cuadrilla, said in a statement, “and that is why we have
stopped fracking operations, to share information and consult with the
relevant authorities and other experts.”
Fracking is a procedure in which water, chemicals and sand are injected deep underground to free oil or gas trapped in dense shale formations.
The technology is widely used in the United States, where it has contributed to a boom in natural gas
production. It has been criticized because the fracking chemicals are
believed to have the potential to contaminate groundwater.
“We have discussed this with Cuadrilla and agreed that a pause in
operations is appropriate so that a better understanding can be gained
of the cause of the seismic events,” the British Department of Energy and Climate Change said in a statement.
Experts from the British Geological Survey, the government and Keele University are examining the data, “and we will need to consider the findings into the cause of the event,” the department said.
The halt was called after the British Geological Survey recorded an earthquake early on May 27 at a depth of about 1.25 miles, with a magnitude of 1.5.
“Any process that injects pressurized water into rocks at depth will
cause the rock to fracture and possibly produce earthquakes,” the survey
said on its Web site.
Brian Baptie, the top seismology official for the organization, said in a
statement that measuring instruments had been installed close to the
drill site after a magnitude 2.3 earthquake occurred on April 1.
“The recorded waveforms are very similar to those from the magnitude 2.3
event,” Mr. Baptie said, “which suggests that the two events share a
similar location and mechanism.”
The two quakes were barely perceptible to humans.
Industry officials say Europe is a decade or more behind the United
States in its effort to recover “unconventional” hydrocarbons like the
oil and gas in shale. Governments and energy companies have viewed
technologies like fracking as a means to reduce European Union
dependence on imported oil and gas, but there can be no certainty that
exploitable deposits exist without further testing.
Cuadrilla’s announcement came as the French Senate on Wednesday began a debate on a proposed fracking ban.
The lower house of Parliament on May 11 passed its own bill,
which would prohibit fracking in the exploration and recovery of oil
and gas, and would revoke existing exploration contracts that relied on
the procedure. The Senate, though, is considering a measure that would
leave open the door to fracking for research.
Read original article
From TheTyee.ca – June 1, 2011
by Ben Parfitt
As British Columbia Premier Christy Clark makes her debut in the provincial legislature this week, the media spotlight will likely be on the predictable verbal sparring between her and Adrian Dix, the NDP’s recently minted leader, over the Harmonized Sales Tax.
Meaning that Independent MLAs Bob Simpson and Vicki Huntington will have their work cut out for them trying to maintain media focus and public attention on their welcome non-partisan call for the appointment of a special legislative committee to thoroughly investigate unconventional natural gas developments in the province.
It’s a call that 21 organizations and prominent British Columbians — including First Nations, leading environmental organizations, local citizens groups in the natural gas-rich northeast corner of the province, and individual town councilors — all support, and one that we at the B.C. Office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives have also endorsed.
For years, the policies of provincial NDP and Liberal administrations alike have been squarely focused on increased exploitation of B.C.’s natural gas resources, which are primarily situated in the Peace River and Northern Rockies regions of the province — an extensive but remote part of B.C. that is larger than the state of Nebraska. This fact may help to explain why it has fallen to Simpson and Huntington to propose that the time has arrived for a sober assessment of the industry’s activities and the role that provincial policies play in shaping them.
It was under the NDP that the one-stop-shop for regulatory energy industry approvals — the Oil and Gas Commission — was created in an effort to eliminate the alleged red tape of multiple agencies reviewing applications by natural gas companies to drill gas wells, build roads and situate pipelines. Dan Miller, under whose tenure as energy and mines minister the OGC was created, would go on to do lobbying work for mining and energy company clients, including Enbridge Inc., the company hoping to build an oil pipeline from Edmonton to Kitimat.
Read full article
Catchy and informative musical cartoon on hydraulic fracturing. The song is based on ProPublica’s investigation on hydraulic fractured gas drilling.
During an eight-minute interview with Fox News’ Mad Money host Jim Kramer last week, Enbridge CEO Pat Daniel made a revelation that was at once startling and hardly surprising – one with profound ramifications for several of the key environmental challenges facing British Columbia.
Here’s what he said (approx. 6 min mark in the video):
We think we’re in a very strong position with regard to exporting Canadian natural gas in particular. We’re currently putting forward our credentials to the proponents – EOG, Apache, Shell and others – that are working on moving Western Canadian natural gas out to the West Coast; and we would hope to be able to see some synergies with the right-of-way that we’re working on with our Gateway pipeline out to the West Coast. So, yes, we’re very interested in doing that and we would hope to be the the pipeline provider for one or both of those alternatives. (emphasis added)
For the past several months, as I’ve been delving into the business of hydraulic fracturing in Northeast BC, a number things have become clear to me:
1. The proposed Pacific Trail Pipelines line from Summit Lake (just north of Prince George) to Kitimat, referred to as the KSL line, will connect natural gas from Northeast BC to a soon-to-be built Liquid Natural Gas processing facility in Kitimat. Both the pipeline and the plant are partnerships of some of the key players in BC’s natural gas business – notably Apache, EOG and Encana.
2. The Kitimat plant (KLNG) will convert this resource into liquid form, which large tankers will then carry across the Pacific to the ravenous Asian market.
3. Because the Asian market is now paying approximately $10-$12 per 1000 cubic feet (the standard metric for gas sales), while we’re paying in the region of $3.50-$4.00 in North America, you can see why these producers want to access this new market.
4. Transforming natural gas from a continental commodity into a global one will likely intensify pressure to extract increasing amounts of natural gas through unconventional methods like fracking and the equally precarious coal bed methane in BC.
A few more revelations have clicked into place recently, cemented by the above comments from Mr. Daniel. For one, the Kitimat-Summit Lake pipeline bears a very similar proposed right-of-way from Central BC to Kitimat as Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Tar Sands bitumen pipeline plan. And while that project has faced intense opposition from First Nations, conservation groups and citizens across the province, its natural gas counterpart has slid through much of the regulatory review process to the point it’s pretty well a fait accompli. The only remaining hurdle for the gas pipeline and LNG plant to clear is the upcoming National Energy Board hearing on June 7 in Kitimat on the 20-year export license required to sell this gas abroad.
This has got me to thinking of late that the KSL line could very well be used to blaze the trail for the Gateway pipeline. But now we have it straight from the horse’s mouth, Enbridge CEO Pat Daniel – this is, indeed, precisely where things appear headed: “…we would hope to be the the pipeline provider for one or both of those alternatives” – that’s both gas and bitumen. (What the safety logistics of running a potentially explosive gas pipeline in close proximity to a crude line are is an important question to consider).
There may not be much that can be done at this stage with regards to this movement of natural gas from BC to China. PetroChina recently invested $5.4 Billion in Encana, the biggest player in BC’s gas patch (whose former CEO is a key advisor to BC Premier Christy Clark). But to those who oppose the Enbridge crude pipeline, let this be a warning of things to come. It will be critical to stay on top of Enbridge’s movements and ensure that one pipeline doesn’t beget the other.
For detailed information on the nuances of this unconventional natural gas development in BC and North America, check out the following reports:
From TheTyee.ca – May 16, 2011
by Andrew Nikiforuk
For several years now, the natural gas industry has
been exclaiming Hallelujahs about the marvels of shale gas with the
passion of a church choir belting out Handel’s “Messiah.”
The hallelujahs, which spring from the U.S.
Energy Information Administration (EIA) or the likes of Chesapeake
Energy (“American’s Champion of Natural Gas”), come in three happy
choruses.
The first says that the shale gas
revolution will miraculously create 100 years worth of methane; the
second chorus maintains that the price of natural gas, a volatile
commodity, will stay low for decades; and the last chorus says that
natural gas will green the economy and arrest climate change.
Hallelujah.
But a new report by J. David Hughes, one of
North America’s foremost coal and gas experts, challenges every single
one of these faith-based assumptions with hard science and clear-eyed
math. In the stunningly lucid 64-page report
for the Post Carbon Institute, Hughes squarely concludes that all three
assumptions are highly questionable, if not total “impossibilities.”
Hughes is no wide-eyed greenie or industry
basher. He happens to be one of Canada’s most credible energy
scientists. The geologist worked for Natural Resources Canada for 32
years and mapped Canada’s coal and coal bed methane fields. He has also
served on Canada’s Natural Gas Potential Committee and is regarded as
one of the continent’s top global energy analysts. (B.C. politicians
take note: Hughes lives on Cortes Island on the West Coast.)
“Natural gas is a truly important resource.
But industry has overblown what shale gas can do for us,” says Hughes.
“Shale gas is an exercise in creating greater complexity with lower and
lower returns.”
Shale industry ‘hubris’
Until shale gas appeared on the scene,
analysts predicted a high noon for natural gas. Gas production in the
U.S. peaked in 1973, and has been on a bumpy production plateau ever
since. But then companies started to use horizontal drilling, combined
with hydraulic fracturing, to open deep rock formations once considered
as inaccessible as bowhead whales in the Arctic.
Hydraulic fracking, a high-energy technology that uses millions of gallons of water, sand and toxic chemicals to blast open methane trapped in dense rock, created a shale boom from Pennsylvania to northern B.C. and beyond.
The fracking energy binge, which
industrializes rural landscapes, sparked moratoriums in Quebec and New
York due to widespread concerns about surface and groundwater
contamination, and earthquakes from reinjected fracking fluids. U.S.
Energy Minister Steven Chu just ordered a high level investigation on fracking issues. Even France has banned the practice to protect its water-dependent cheese makers and grape growers.
Although T. Boone Pickens, the natural gas
lobby and some environmental groups now champion shale gas as a
“transition fuel” that could possibly retire coal plants and even power
vehicles, Hughes says the real production numbers don’t add up without
unprecedented levels of drilling.
For starters, industry hubris simply defies
the law of thermodynamics. From 1990 levels, U.S. gas drilling tripled
to 33,000 wells per year between 2006 and 2008 before collapsing back to
20,000 wells. In order to build a modest 21 per cent increase in
natural gas production, the gas industry constructed a complex
infrastructure nearly 100 per cent larger than what previously existed
in 1990.
“What matters are flow rates and how fast
the gas can be produced,” explains Hughes. “There may be 100 years worth
of methane in the ground, but it may take 800 years to produce it.”
Meanwhile, conventional gas production in both Canada and the U.S. is
declining rapidly. In other words, shale gas might temporarily replace
some of the air leaving the conventional gas tire — but not for long.
Read full article
From The Tyee – May 13, 2011
by Andrew MacLeoad
France’s parliament voted this week to ban a controversial method of
extracting shale gas, but don’t expect British Columbia to follow
anytime soon.
“I don’t know what France’s environmental standards are
and how they do their work,” said B.C.’s Energy and Mines Minister Rich
Coleman. “I know we’ve been doing fracking here for probably over a
decade or more . . . We have pretty high environmental standards. We
track it, we watch it, and we’re going to continue to do so.”
Fracking is a process that involves injecting rock
formations with water, chemicals and sand to break them apart and allow
the fossil fuels they contain to be extracted. Opponents say the process
uses toxic substances and contaminates groundwater.
“What we’re doing is a lot different even mix wise than
some of these other jurisdictions,” said Coleman. “We’re so much deeper
than they are. We’re way down three or four thousand feet . . . and our
ground water in the area we’re doing is probably up at 300 or 400 feet,
so we’re way beyond below it and we haven’t had any leaching.”
The province plans to do a health study related to
fracking, but unlike in some other jurisdictions the process is used in
remote areas of B.C. far from residential areas, he said.
France’s fracking ban still needs to pass the country’s
senate to become law. “The overwhelming vote by the National Assembly
follows months of protest across France against a technique that
environmentalists say threatens to pollute the water table,” wrote the Financial Times.
Read original article
I became interested in the “Fraccing” issue when I paddled the Peace River last year as part of the annual Site C protest. During my visit to Hudson’s Hope I was advised by community leaders to look at the Talisman operations on the Beryl Prairie Road and to visit the company’s water withdrawal sites at the Williston Reservoir and on the Peace River. My quick tour of these operations convinced me we have serious public policy issues that are not being addressed by the current government’s aggressive development of BC’s shale gas resources.
Subsequent research and discussions with people who have been paying attention to unconventional gas development for some time has led me to believe that BC must learn from other jurisdictions that are taking a more cautious and thoughtful approach to the use of hydraulic fracturing to extract shale gas. Unfortunately, two BC Ministers have discounted any calls for more public scrutiny or a more precautionary approach to fraccing in BC’s Peace Region. Both claim that BC has some of the best regulations in the world and, therefore, there is no need for concern.
So it’s “drill baby drill” for BC.
Unfortunately, the facts do not support the Ministers’ contention about the strength of BC’s regulations. While the province does have a new Oil and Gas Activities Act and the structure of BC’s Oil and Gas Commission (OGC) has been examined by other jurisdictions, the heart of BC’s regulatory framework is “results based” rather than “prescriptive” – meaning the industry basically self-regulates within a loose framework of objectives set by government.
Two documents available on the OGC website clearly illustrate weaknesses in BC’s regulatory framework: the Failure Investigation Report on the 2009 Encana Swan Wellsite leak and a 2010 Safety Advisory on “communication” between drilling operations.
The 2009 failure and leak at the Encana Swan Wellsite resulted in the release of 30,000 cubic metres of sour gas. Residents reacted to the leak and evacuated the area before Encana was able to verify the leak was occurring and initiate emergency procedures or notify appropriate emergency agencies.
The Failure Investigation Report concludes that “the Emergency Response Plan used by Encana was not updated with current information,” that Encana failed “to follow established procedures for well cleanup monitoring,” that Encana’s “monitoring equipment at the site did not provide” timely communication of the leak to Encana personnel, and that the setup of their emergency shutdown valve “did not enable remote or automated shut in of the failed piping.”
The OGC issued twelve directives to Encana and states in its report that “Encana has provided a satisfactory response” to each directive; however, the real question is why Encana’s shortcomings were not discovered prior to a catastrophic failure. The answer: the industry self-polices. The OGC presumes that each and every company will protect the health and safety of citizens – until they don’t, then the OGC investigates to find out why.
Unfortunately history, especially recent history, and especially the history of this particular sector, does not warrant this level of trust. To truly protect the public interest BC need more proactive oversight of the industry than failure investigations.
The second example of the inherent weakness of BC’s current regulatory regime can be found in the OGC’s May 20, 2010 Safety Advisory “Communication During Fracture Stimulation.”
This Advisory points out that when a horizontal well is “stimulated” during a fraccing operation an adjacent horizontal well can be “kicked.” Translation: the toxic fluids used to blast open the shale formation at one wellsite can go further than they’re supposed to (up to 750m further according to the Advisory) and end up blasting their way into an already active well, causing that well to blow out. In the OGC’s own language “communication” between wells can “result in suspended production, substantial remediation costs and pose a potential safety hazard.”
The OGC was “aware” of 18 such incidents in BC when it published its Advisory in 2010 and noted all were dealt with successfully. More telling though is the following statement in the Advisory: “Fracture propagation via large scale hydraulic operations has proven difficult to predict. Existing planes of weakness in target formations may result in fracture lengths that exceed initial design expectations” (emphasis is mine).
Given the OGC’s admission of the high degree of unpredictability of fraccing operations and the threat to public safety that “communication” between operations poses, it seems reasonable to expect that the OGC would have established an enforceable regulation creating a safe buffer zone to prevent “communication” and “kicks” from occurring. Not so, the OGC’s Advisory simply recommends that “operators cooperate through notifications … where fracturing takes place within 1000m” of other operations and reminds operators of their obligation to report any “communication between fracture operations” to the OGC.
That’s why the OGC’s document is called an “Advisory:” it is restricted to simply advising competitive companies that they need to cooperate in order to protect the public interest.
Along with more deliberate oversight of the industry, BC clearly needs more prescriptive regulations over an industry that relies on a process that is highly unpredictable and which poses potential safety hazards every time a well is “stimulated.”
Over and above these obvious weaknesses in the regulatory regime are a host of other issues which require more investigation and caution rather than a “drill baby drill” mindset by Ministers: overall public health and safety issues, water use and regulation, cumulative land use impacts, first nations rights, and climate change impacts to name a few.
Rather than discounting reasonable calls for more caution and public input into hydraulic fracturing by claiming BC is already well regulated, the government should use the current downturn in the natural gas sector to conduct a full public review of this sector to ensure BC does have the right regulatory regime for this relatively new and highly unpredictable approach to extracting natural gas from BC’s deep shale bed formations.
Bob Simpson is the Independent BC MLA for Cariboo North