MONCTON, N.B. – A group opposed to shale gas development in New Brunswick is raising questions about the RCMP’s enforcement of an injunction against protesters last week in the province.
Jim Emberger of the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance says the Mounties should be asked about the authorization, timing and necessity of their actions Thursday near Rexton.
Emberger says there have been many peaceful anti-shale gas demonstrations in the province.
Forty people were arrested and weapons seized when the Mounties enforced the court-ordered injunction to end the blockade of a SWN Resources storage compound for exploration equipment and vehicles.
Six police vehicles including an unmarked van were burned and the RCMP have said they had Molotov cocktails tossed at them.
In response, police fired non-lethal beanbag-type bullets and used pepper spray to defuse the situation.
Emberger told a news conference in Moncton that his group will track the position of candidates on the shale gas issue in next year’s provincial election.
He says the alliance is also raising money to fund a legal challenge to the shale gas industry in New Brunswick.
New Brunswick Justice George Rideout declined today to extend an injunction against members of the Elsipogtog First Nation who have been protesting exploratory activities for fracking on their territory.
A video posted on facebook following today’s hearing shows several Mi’kmaq people, having just exited the courtroom, rejoicing over the judge’s decision. “There is no more injuction on the people who have been named or the Jane and John Does of New Brunswick,” one woman tells the camera.
A short-term injunction issued by the court on Oct. 3 to a subsidiary of Texas company SWN Resources resulted in last week’s heavy-handed RCMP raid of a peaceful Elsipogtog protest camp – provoking outrage and supportive rallies across the country last week.
[quote]In the minutes leading up to the ruling, shale gas opponents, many from Elsipogtog First Nation, were drumming and singing in the courtroom and hallway. The court building was also crowded with supporters of protesters arrested on Thursday during a confrontation between RCMP and shale gas opponents in Rexton, N.B. [/quote]
The judge’s ruling is drawing praise from environmental groups supporting the Mi’kmaq fracking protest. “We are thrilled with the reports coming out of the courtroom in Moncton today that SWN’s injunction has been lifted,” says Angela Giles, Atlantic regional organizer with the Council of Canadians.
[quote]I visited the site and stayed in Elsipogtog over the weekend and the community is standing strong. The Mayors of Kent County, the Assembly of First Nations Chiefs of New Brunswick have publically supported the anti-shale gas movement… when will Premier Alward and his government listen to the people?[/quote]
Justice Rideout declined to give a reason for today’s decision but will be issuing a written statement.
Updated 12:20 PM PST. Watch for more updates on this developing story
Elsipogtog First Nation Chief Arren Sock with supporters (Miles Howe/Halifax Media Coop)
REXTON, N.B. – The chief of the Elsipogtog (ell-see-book-took) First Nation in New Brunswick is criticizing the RCMP for its conduct last week in controlling a protest against shale gas exploration, promising his community will continue to oppose the industry’s development in the province.
Arren Sock says every effort will be made to keep its opposition peaceful after 40 people were arrested and weapons seized when the Mounties enforced a court-ordered injunction Thursday to end the blockade of a compound near Rexton, where SWN Resources stored exploration equipment and vehicles.
Grand Chief Derek Nepinak of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs is in New Brunswick to show his support for the band and described the Mounties’ actions last week as the violent use of state power.
Assistant commissioner Roger Brown, the Mounties’ commanding officer in the province, has defended the police response, saying officers seized firearms and improvised explosive devices that were a threat to public safety.
Six police vehicles including an unmarked van were burned and Molotov cocktails were tossed at police, who fired non-lethal beanbag type bullets and used pepper spray to defuse the situation.
Sock says no decisions have been made on how the band will proceed but he expects a meeting later this week with Premier David Alward, whose government believes shale gas exploration can be done while protecting the environment and encouraging economic growth.
On Sunday morning, about 50 people gathered in the rain at the protest site on Route 134. Protesters on Highway 11 in Rexton set up a blockade Saturday for a short period of time.
Sock was among those arrested last week. Police say the arrests were for firearms offences, threats, intimidation, mischief and violating the injunction.
The RCMP blocked Route 134 three weeks ago after protesters began spilling onto the road. Protesters then cut down trees and placed them across another part of the road, blocking the entrance to the company’s equipment compound.
The protesters want SWN Resources to stop seismic testing and leave the province. The company says it’s only in the early stages of exploration in New Brunswick.
Members of the Elsipogtog Nation and RCMP clash at a recent protest over fracking in New Brunswick
REXTON, N.B. – Hundreds of people gathered at a community hall in New Brunswick on Sunday to discuss their opposition of the development of a shale gas sector in the province as their protest garnered support from a Manitoba grand chief.
Elsipogtog Chief Arren Sock said the meeting at New Brunswick’s Elsipogtog First Nation was a chance for people in his community to tell their stories.
“It’s just part of the healing process and I wanted that to begin,” said Sock after the meeting, which drew about 300 community members and protesters and was closed to media.
Sock would not say if anything was decided during the meeting on how to proceed with the protest over shale gas exploration, noting:
[quote]We just started the healing process and in the coming days I will have more information.[/quote]
Manitoba, NB chiefs stand together
Sock and Grand Chief Derek Nepinak of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs were expected to hold a news conference at Elsipogtog Monday morning.
Nepinak said the assembly chiefs in Manitoba sent him to New Brunswick to stand in solidarity with the community and protesters.
“We recognize that there are a lot of consistencies in a lot of what is happening across the land with extractive industry and corporate interests versus indigenous rights and our fight to preserve our ecosystems,” he said. “We have a commitment and responsibility to the land and people need to respect that.”
Nepinak wouldn’t say what he thinks Elsipogtog should do next in its opposition to fracking, but said he would stay as long as he was needed.
Apologies to media over equipment seizure
One speaker at the community hall apologized to media who had their vehicles and equipment seized by a small group of protesters Saturday. The apology sparked a standing ovation from the crowd. Some protesters told reporters for Global and CTV News to leave their vehicles and their equipment. Everything was later returned.
Earlier Sunday, about 50 people gathered in the rain at the protest site on Route 134, where tents were set up and protest signs scattered about.
Protesters on Highway 11 in Rexton had set up a blockade Saturday for a short period of time.
Burned vehicles
Days before, six police vehicles including an unmarked van were burned and Molotov cocktails were tossed at police before they fired non-lethal beanbag type bullets and pepper spray to defuse the situation.
The gutted vehicles have since been towed to a nearby parking lot, about five minutes from the protest site.
RCMP said they also found improvised explosive devices on Thursday that were modified to discharge shrapnel and used a fuse-ignition system after enforcing a court-ordered injunction to remove protesters at the site of a compound in Rexton where SWN Resources stored exploration equipment.
40 members arrested, including chief
Officers arrested 40 people — including Sock — for firearms offences, threats, intimidation, mischief and violating the injunction.
The RCMP blocked Route 134 on Sept. 29 after a protest there began spilling onto the road. Protesters subsequently cut down trees that were placed across another part of the road, blocking the entrance to the compound.
The protesters want SWN Resources to stop seismic testing and leave the province, although the company says it’s only in the early stages of exploration in New Brunswick.
Canadian Natural resource Minister Joe Oliver told the Congress that Canada expects 650 Billion US dollars worth of investment in the energy industry. We are at the Centre of the international fracking boom and most Canadians dont know it. It is literally like being in the eye of the storm.
And then it happened.
Elsipogtog
Early in the morning, a frightening squadron of snipers crawling on their bellies through the long grass snuck up on a line of tents in rural New Brunswick, where Mi’kmaq elders, children and other “protectors” were camped in a weeks long blockade.
The crude awakening for the spattering of Mi’kmaq protectors quickly led to an escalation in fear and soon rubber bullets were flying and police cars were blazing.
What was a weeks-long peaceful display of people protecting their land and demanding a respectful and responsible process that was inclusive and fair in the exploitation our nation’s resource wealth quickly became a spectacle of police state oppression.
Trade Deals and Treaties collide
Much like BC, the Mi’kmaq lands are unceded, with a stalled treaty process that has been going since before the Burying the Hatchet ceremony of 1761. The Treaties did not gain legal status until they were enshrined into the Canadian Constitution in 1982.
Every October 1, “Treaty Day” is now celebrated by Nova Scotians. Recently, upwards of 100,000 of Mi’kmaq people gained “status” due to court proceedings and it was a serious landmark in the struggle of the Mi’kmaq people.
However, today may be the beginning of a another page of history for the Mi’kmaq people.
After yet another prorogued parliament and the day after the pomp and ceremony of the “Speech from the Throne” designed to “turn the channel” away from the torrent of scandals the first half of the Harper majority visited upon the land, the Mi’kmaq people turned the channel back to the now longstanding undercurrent of native unrest from coast to coast, manifested in major movements like Idle no More.
At the very heart of the unrest is the collision between dysfunctional treaty relations, international trade agreements and the unprecedented exploitation of the land. Literally, trillions of dollars of Canadian natural resources are up for grabs and the international corporate model of globalized exploitation has ushered in a third world model of oppression and greed that is sparking significant pushback.
Therefore it was fitting that this event occurred while Harper was skipping out on his first day back at the House to fly to Europe and celebrate his government’s signing of the first major Free Trade Agreement since the Mulroney conservatives entered us into the highly controversial North American Free Trade Agreement.
European trade deal, oil and gas
CETA is a comprehensive trade agreement with huge implications, much of which revolve around oil and gas, despite the fact that all that is being reported is a squabble over cheese.
CETA can be added to a long list of trade and investment agreements that are ushering in a new era, sidelining governments in favour of corporate rights and control and placing the profitability of foreign interests over the citizens of the country, our domestic economy and the environment we all depend upon.
First Nations people understand that the window of opportunity to try and wrestle a modicum of sovereignty and control over our economic destiny and environmental sustainability is closing. CETA, TPP, FIPPA are all about to slam that window shut and build upon existing trade and investment agreements that thoroughly alter the economic and political landscape of the country at the expense of the citizens who depend upon it.
This affects all Canadians
With the pace of the oil and gas agenda reaching a “gold rush” stage and Harper’s vision of “Energy Super Power” becoming crystal clear, people from coast to coast to coast are beginning to realize this might not be all that it was cracked up to be – and that when Harper claimed “you won’t recognize Canada when I am done”, he was right.
The labyrinth of domestic legislation rammed through by way of omnibus coupled with trade and investment agreements have, in effect, left all Canadians voiceless squatters on our own land.
The courageous actions of the Mi’kmaq people and leaders like Pam Palmater are at the tip of the spear.
#Elsipogtog could be the spark that starts the fracking fire, putting at risk the 650 Billion dollar agenda Oliver boasted about and trade agreements Harper celebrated on the same day they unleashed the RCMP in rural New Brunswick against a brave and courageous people.
They may call themselves the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society, but from all indications, this group of indigenous peoples was leading a peaceful protest against fracking in their territory when a platoon of heavily-armed, camouflaged RCMP officers descended upon their camp in Rexton, New Brunswick, early this morning.
The officers were enforcing an injunction against a two-week-long blockade of shale gas exploration activities by a subsidiary of Houston-based Southwestern Energy. The injunction was sought by the company, with whom the government has explicitly declined to broker a stand-down. According to an RCMP statement, at least 40 arrests have been made, with “hundreds” of RCMP officers now on the scene, according to a Mi’kmaq witness.
Heavy-handed tactics
APTN has been reporting on the heavy-handed tactics deployed by the RCMP on the peaceful gathering – including the use of dogs and firing of rubber bullets at protestors from the trees surrounding the camp.
APTN reporter Ossie Michelin says she heard one of the officers shout:
[quote]Crown land belongs to the government, not to fucking natives.[/quote]
A former chief of the Elsipogtog First Nation who is acting as a liaison between protestors and police, Susan Levi-Peters, told the Globe and Mail by phone:
[quote]It is really very volatile. It’s a head-to-head between the people and the RCMP right now and the Warriors are in the middle surrounded by the RCMP and then the RCMP are surrounded by the people…There are people who have been tasered.[/quote]
Not a criminal problem, but a political one
The RCMP, province and courts apparently fail to recognize that this is not a criminal matter (injunctions fall outside of the criminal code), but a political one. These Mi’kmaq peoples have identified a very real threat to their lands and waters from fracking and they aren’t being meaningfully listened to by any of the above parties.
And yet, any solution to this plainly political dilemma is being undermined by an American company, at whose behest the RCMP acted today, while the government sits on the sidelines.
During an emergency meeting last week between NB Premier David Alward and Elsipogtog First Nation Chief Arren Sock, Alward declined to ask the company to withdraw its injunction to allow time for a proposed government-nation working group to resolve the underlying issues that prompted the blockade.
According to APTN, “Alward said he would not be contacting the company to discuss the situation because the issue was out of his hands.
[quote]The government does not direct how an injunction or how a legal process takes place.[/quote]
A letter delivered to Southwestern Energy by a Texas environmental group on behalf of the Mi’kmaq Warrior Society failed to persuade the company to back down from serving the injunction this week.
“These attacks to our people’s water source infringe on the integrity of our cultural resources and heritage in our region,” the letter said. “Allowing further development violates our treaty rights to not only hunt, fish and gather…but our treaty right, Aboriginal right and title right to the land and water itself.”
Another Oka?
There are still many unanswered questions about today’s standoff, but it is clear that these legal and police tactics will only further inflame the situation.
Ms. Levi-Peters raised the spectre of Oka – the armed standoff between Mohawk protestors and Quebec police, RCMP and military that gave Canada a black eye on the world’s stage.
[quote]It’s Oka all over again and it’s sad because we said all we need is public consultation…These Warrriors, they are not militant. They are youth and they have had enough.[/quote]
The blockade was being mounted with drums and feathers, Levi-Peters told the Globe and Mail, “and instead the government sent in the army on them.”
Now, more than ever, there is a need for peaceful, rational dialogue around an industry that poses significant environmental, health and economic threats to Canada’s indigenous peoples and citizens.
Premier Alward had the right idea establishing a working group to foster vital dialogue with Mi’kmaq leaders – but those good intentions have been severely undermined by the arcane, heavy-handed actions of an American fracking company and the RCMP.
Fracking protest in New Brunswick (photo: Colin McPhail)
by Emma Lui
Communities everywhere are calling for a stop to fracking – from Elsipogtog First Nation’s highway blockade in New Brunswick to Californians, New Yorkers and other Americans urging for a frackign ban on public lands to farmers occupying fields in Poland, to recent fracking protests in the U.K.
Quebec fracking moratorium
It was this sort of public pressure that prompted the Quebec government to place a moratorium on new fracking permits in parts of the St. Lawrence Basin in June 2011. With this law, less than one per cent of licenses in the total exploration area were revoked. In June 2013, a bill submitted to the Quebec National Assembly that would expand the moratorium to fracking in the lowlands of the St. Lawrence River.
If the law is passed, the moratorium would be in effect for a period of five years. Quebec’s anti-fracking movement has been incredibly strong with dozens of municipalities passing resolutions calling for a moratorium on fracking, frequent protests and a 700-kilometre march along from Rimouski along the St. Lawrence and Richelieu Rivers to Montreal.
Fracking’s water contamination
Fracking is a way of extracting natural gas – often using millions of litres of water, thousands of pounds of sand and thousands of litres of unknown chemicals, gas companies blast apart shale rock to release the trapped natural gas. U.S. and Quebec government studies have shown that some fracking chemicals include carcinogens and hazardous air pollutants.
Companies are not legally required to disclose the amount or type of chemicals they use and in fact this information is protected as a trade secret. Communities around the world have raised concerns about the impacts that fracking has on drinking water, greenhouse gas emissions and public health.
Given the red flags raised by indigenous communities, dairy farmers, U.S. doctors, German brewers and more recently even the European Union, you would think Quebec was well within its right to ban this risky practice until they had completed the necessary studies. Think again.
Lone Pine’s NAFTA challenge
Holding one of the revoked licences, Lone Pine Resources, an oil and gas company, is now launching a $250 million lawsuit against the Canadian government over Quebec’s fracking moratorium under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Although Lone Pine maintains all its operations in Canada, it’s registered in Delaware which allows it to make claims under NAFTA.
The company is claiming that Quebec moratorium is “arbitrary” and “capricious,” and that it deprives Lone Pine of its right to profit from fracking for natural gas in Quebec’s Saint Lawrence Valley.
Groups like the Council of Canadians, the Réseau québécois sur l’Intégration continentale, the Sierra Club, For Love of Water (FLOW), Eau Secours!, and AmiEs de la Terre have been gathering signatures for a letter to Lone Pine urging the company to drop plans to sue Canada and sending a letter to Lone Pine for every thousand signatures they receive. The groups issued a press release last week when they discovered that Lone Pine had quietly filed a request for arbitration indicating that the company was moving forward with the NAFTA lawsuit.
NAFTA Tribunal not accountable to Canadians
The lawsuit is very troubling. It undermines our basic notions of democracy, threatens needed environmental regulations, and puts private profits above the public good. What’s more, the lawsuit will not go through the public court system. The case will be heard before an unaccountable tribunal that may but is not required to consider issues of public health or water and environmental protections. The tribunal’s one concern is whether a government measure upsets the company’s broad set of rights in NAFTA.
And we could be seeing more cases like this where investor rights trump legitimate regulations protecting water sources, curbing climate impacts or safeguarding public health if trade agreements that are currently being negotiated are signed into law. The text of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) between the U.S., Canada, and 10 other nations, is expected to closely mirror NAFTA’s investment rules, while Canada is in the final stretch for a deal with the European Union that would also provide those excessive powers to multinationals.
Trade deals, water and fracking
And it’s not just fracking bans or moratoria that can be challenged under these trade deals. The amount of water a fracking company draws could be subject to a trade agreement lawsuit if a government decides to cut back on the amount of water it had previously allocated for a fracking project. The Fort Nelson First Nation has been fighting applications for the withdrawal of three billion of litres of water per year from the Fort Nelson River for fracking projects in northeastern B.C.
Once approved, if the B.C. government decided to restrict the water withdrawals because of drought or other availability concerns, the government could open Canada up to another investor-state lawsuit. B.C.’s recent announcement of its LNG deal with Malaysia’s Petronas, one of countries that are involved in the TPP negotiations, is another reason alarm bells should be sounding.
UN: Water is a human right
In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution recognizing the human right to water and sanitation and the UN Human Rights Council has also passed resolutions outlining governments’ obligations concerning the right to water and sanitation. This right is now enshrined in international law and Canada, like all other countries, must ensure its implementation.
Catarina de Albuquerque, the UN’s special rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, wrote specifically about fracking and its relationship to the human right to water during her visit to the United States in 2011. De Albuquerque’s U.S. report highlights the concerns raised about the impacts of fracking on water and recommends that countries need to take “a holistic consideration of the right to water by factoring it into policies having an impact on water quality, ranging from agriculture to chemical use in products to energy production activities.” In order to protect the human right to water, governments of all levels must place a ban on fracking.
Study finds radioactive water from fracking
With the exorbitant amount of water used for fracking and the risk of water contamination – as seen with Duke University’s recent study warning that fracking is resulting in radioactive contamination in Pennsylvania rivers – communities must continue to call for a ban on fracking.
Communities have a right to say ‘no’ to fracking and any projects that threaten their water sources. So it’s even more crucial that communities pressure decision-makers to exclude investor-state dispute settlement processes from trade agreements so that communities safeguard not only their right but also their responsibility to protect water for current and future generations.
Emma Lui is a water campaigner with the Council of Canadians, based in Ottawa. Emma’s work focuses on the Great Lakes, human rights, water privatization and the connection between energy and water. She has worked at the Canadian Human Rights Commission and has an M.A. in political economy.
Environmental consultant Jessica Ernst on her land in Alberta (Colin Smith photo)
ROSEBUD, Alta. – An Alberta woman has lost a round in her legal battle against the contentious process of hydraulic fracturing.
Jessica Ernst launched a $33-million lawsuit against the Alberta government, the province’s energy regulator and energy company Encana (TSX:ECA).
She claims gas wells fracked around her property in southern Alberta unleashed hazardous amounts of methane and ethane gas and other chemicals into her water well.
An Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench judge has ruled Ernst can’t sue the regulator because under provincial law it is immune from private legal claims.
Ernst says she plans to appeal the ruling, and says the lawsuit against Encana and the provincial government will proceed.
In its statement of defence, Encana denies all of Ernst’s allegations.
“It is worrying that citizens are unable to hold the energy regulator accountable for failing to protect citizens from the harmful impacts of fracking,” Cory Wanless, a lawyer for Ersnt said in a release Wednesday.
Hydraulic fracturing involves pumping water, nitrogen, sand and chemicals at high pressure to fracture rock and allow natural gas or oil to flow through wells to the surface.
In his ruling, Chief Justice Neil Wittmann dismissed an application by the Alberta government to remove some other parts of Ernst’s lawsuit that involve the province.
Wanless says the Alberta government has not filed a statement of defence in the case.
Fracking operations in BC’s Montney Shale (photo: Damien Gillis)
Beneath the glowing rhetoric surrounding BC’s promised liquefied natural gas (LNG) boom lies a dirty little secret: the vast majority of the industry would be powered by controversial fracking in northeast BC. Add that to the huge carbon footprint and local air pollution from the plants themselves and “clean” LNG becomes an oxymoron of epic proportions.
Dirty fracking
The relatively new technique of fracking involves hoovering up enormous volumes of water out of lakes and rivers, injecting it with fine sand and largely unknown, toxic chemicals, then blasting this cocktail deep underground to crack open shale formations where gases are “trapped” (as if they’re just begging to be freed!).
[quote]Every time you hear LNG, think of one of the least efficient energy systems every invented. Think fracking. Think water contamination. Think asthma. Think climate change…[/quote]
This “game-changing” combination of technologies has, in the decade or so that it has been in widespread use, provoked a wave protests, bans and moratoriums around the world, over its impacts on air, water, and human health.
In touting the economic potential of LNG terminals on BC’s coast – of which a dozen or so have been proposed, along with four major pipelines to supply them with gas from northeast BC and Alberta – the BC Liberal Government ignores the fact that they would be powered by what shale gas expert David Hughes calls “a very aggressive increase in the number of fracked wells in northeast BC”.
LNG = Way, way more fracking
Today, BC produces about 4 billion cubic feet a day of natural gas. It has taken us 50 years and 39,000 wells to get to this point.
Construction of Spectra’s Horn River gas plant in 2011 (Damien Gillis)
The consequences are evident whenever you fly over the Peace Valley region near Fort St. John, or the Horn River Basin, northeast of Fort Nelson. Geometrical patterns of well pads, industrial roads, seismic lines, processing plants, compressor stations and massive water pits carve up the northern Boreal landscape as far as the eye can see.
It’s hard to imagine what a several-fold increase in all this activity would look like, but that’s precisely what would be required to power BC’s LNG industry.
Presently, a little under half the gas coming out of BC is from fracking – the rest from “conventional” gas plays. But that balance is quickly shifting. We’ve already tapped most of the easy, lower-impact stuff and the majority of new supplies will come from shale gas.
BC’s Minister of Natural Gas Development, Rich Coleman, recently revealed the extent of his government’s vision for “clean” LNG: they want to see five of these plants built, with three up and running by 2020.
If you look at the volumes of the four pipelines proposed to supply these plants – two to Kitimat, the other two to Prince Rupert – the combined capacity ranges from 10-15 billion cubic feet/day (2.5 to almost 4 times our current production).
Minister Coleman intends to continue supplying BC’s own energy needs and our Canadian and US customers – this new LNG would come on top ofthat 4 billion cubic feet/day.
That means a several-fold increase in gas production into the distant future. Since most of that new supply would have to come from fracking, you can see why a massive increase would be required to feed LNG.
The impacts would extend in many directions. The 11 billion or so litres of water reported by the Oil and Gas Commission as used and contaminated for fracking each year in BC would be upped several-fold – this in a region often beset by drought conditions. The potential health impacts (only now being investigated by the BC government) from flaring, escaped methane and even more toxic gases would also be ramped up accordingly.
See timelapse animation of increasing water withdrawals for fracking in the Horn River Basin (story continues below).
Fracked-up economics
Fracking has been a victim of its own success. While it has opened up new supplies of previously inaccessible gas, the combination of this new technology and reduced royalties from governments like BC’s to incentivize development has seen the North American market flooded with gas.
The result has been tremendous downward pressure on domestic prices. A resource that once fetched $8-plus per unit, is now routinely below $4, sometimes much worse. But in Asia, prices have remained high – upwards of four or five times the local price. So the big idea is for North American producers to access these markets and capture higher returns. (I won’t touch the reams of evidence undermining this model here – we’ll cover that in the next piece in this series).
Climate and air pollution
The problem is that in order to carry the gas to these overseas markets, it has to be cooled to minus 160 degrees celsius, and that takes enormous amounts of energy – far more than we can supply with our public electricity system (though the BC government wants to flood a 100km section of the Peace River to build a dam that would help power LNG plants through taxpayer-subsidized pubic energy).
So a government that just a few years back brought in a “Clean Energy Act” with much fanfare is now back-pedalling, allowing the industry to use its own gas to create electricity to cool and liquefy the gas. The result would be a massive increase in BC’s carbon emissions.
More than that, local residents in Kitimat and Prince Rupert could see dangerous increases in air pollution. The BC government only recently announced a study into air pollution from three proposed Kitimat plants for local residents. With the modernization of Alcan’s Kitimat aluminium smelter set to double its SO2 output, even a government bullish on LNG is compelled to consider what these new LNG plants would mean for public health.
Yet an air pollution expert from the University of British Columbia, Prof. Douw Steyn, feels the $650,000 budget and six month timeframe for the study is woefully inadequate. I can understand why they want it. “The big question is: ‘Is that timeline being driven by the cause of industry or by prudent science,'” Steyn asked upon the study’s announcement last week.
Moreover, why weren’t these studies carried out before the government staked BC’s economic future on an LNG boom?
BC’s low standards
A recent study by Clean Energy Canada found that even if we’re to ignore the dirty source of BC’s LNG (fracking), the cooling process itself would be far dirtier per unit of energy produced than comparable operations in places like Australia and Norway – further putting the lie to Coleman and co.’s “world’s cleanest LNG” boasts.
In closing, let me describe, in a nutshell, BC’s economic vision, if this LNG scheme proceeds as planned:
We will take tens of billions of litres of water out of our rivers and lakes, inject them full of chemicals, then use enormous amounts of energy to blast this concoction underground and recover gas. More energy will then used to clean and process the gas, before it’s piped 800 km across northern BC, powered by more, energy-intensive compressor stations along the way.
Then, even more gas and electricity will be consumed in massive quantities to cool the gas, which will be loaded onto ships whose trans-Pacific voyage is powered by even more gas. Meanwhile, another ship carries our raw logs and metals to a factory in China, where our gas is burned so those raw materials can be manufactured into finished goods, which are then put on a ship, fuelled by bunker diesel, on its way back to Canada.
All so those goods can be trucked to a Walmart, where we can drive our cars to save a few bucks on a cheap table that ends up in the landfill a few years later.
That’s the future BC’s politicians are trying desperately to build. There is nothing “clean” or visionary about it.
So every time you hear LNG, think of one of the least efficient energy systems every invented. Think fracking. Think water contamination. Think asthma. Think climate change…
Malaysian PM Najib Razak and Stephen Harper (AP/Lai Seng Sin)
During a recent state visit by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Malaysia, host PM Najib Razak pledged a “gargantuan” investment of $36 Billion for gas infrastructure in British Columbia, through national energy company Petronas.
The Sunday announcement comes following last year’s controversial $5 billion-plus takeover of Canadian company Progress Energy and early-stage plans for a pipeline and liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant near Prince Rupert, on BC’s north coast. It also marks the first tangible “final investment” commitment from any of the dozen or so LNG proposals that have flooded BC over the past couple years, involving more than 20 local and international players.
While companies like Chevron and Apache have together ponied up $500 million for engineering, surveying and early construction work (Chevron and Apache’s joint venture in Kitimat is the only one so far to obtain required permits), none have taken the plunge on the tens of billions required to follow through on their pipeline and LNG plans.
$36 Billion – that’s a lot of ringgits. If it were my state-owned energy company, I’d want to be darned sure my investment was justified.
So here is a little unsolicited investment advice for Mr. Razak, free of charge.
We don’t actually have all that gas
If you listen to BC’s Minister of Natural Gas Development, Rich Coleman, BC has discovered a magical, bottomless well of gas – through the controversial, new extraction method of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”. Mr. Coleman may indeed have a boundless source of fuel: it’s called hot air.
While we’ve uncovered new supplies in northeast BC, trapped in shale formations deep underground, the numbers being quoted by the likes of Coleman are wildly out of touch with reality.
I put Mr. Coleman’s figures from a recent speech at the Union of BC Municipalities’ annual convention in Vancouver to one of Canada’s top independent shale gas experts, David Hughes. Mr. Hughes is a recently retired 32-year senior geoscientist and manager for the Geological Survey of Canada. He led the development of the federal government’s coal registry and was team leader for unconventional gas on the Canadian Gas Potential Committee.
In short, the man knows what he’s talking about – and he’s not speaking for industry or government.
In his speech, Coleman boldly predicted BC has enough gas to supply 5 LNG terminals for 84 years – on top of local needs and sales to Canadian and US customers – while using only 30% of our known reserves.
As Mr. Hughes counters, drawing on data from BC’s own Oil and Gas Commission (you’d think the minister would check his own government’s figures!), that statement represents an exaggeration of about 4000% from our real known reserves:
[quote]To put it bluntly, BC has 34.6 tcf of reserves in the bank and Rich is counting on 1365.4 tcf of undiscovered gas to be discovered and recovered, to cover his LNG projects and commitments to North America…[/quote]
Surely, there will be new discoveries to come – particularly in the yet untapped Liard Basin, where Apache claims to have found monster reserves through recent test drilling – but that’s not what Mr. Coleman is saying when he uses the term “known reserves”. Moreover, the idea that we will discover 40 times more gas – let alone that all that proves recoverable – simply stretches the imagination.
Even if Petronas was the only LNG project and pipeline (one of four major ones proposed) to go forward, the availability of gas required to fill these demands and justify this kind of investment is highly questionable – nay, darned near impossible.
At the moment, BC produces about 4 billion cubic feet/day (bcf/day) of gas. The capacity of Petronas’ proposed pipeline, to feed its LNG terminal with gas from northeast BC, is 2-3.6 bcf/day. That means an increase of half to almost all of the gas produced in BC today, just to fill Petronas’ pipeline and plant.
Minister Coleman’s answer to skeptics? “I’m an optimist!”
That’s all good and fine – I just hope the decision-makers in Malaysia have a few realists on the payroll.
Fracking’s unprecedented decline rates
Even if it were possible to fill Petronas’ pipeline in the short term – again, assuming it beats out all its competitors to secure this supply – Prime Minister Razak acknowledges this project is a “long-term” investment.
Staggering decline rates for major US shale gas plays (graph: David Hughes)
The experience of Amercian fracking companies – the first out of the gate with this technology – should raise some big, red flags. Today, some of the major, early fracking booms south of the border are going bust – in places like Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale.
Why? As Hughes points out, after analyzing years of actual wellhead and production data, the decline rates for unconventional shale gas are far steeper than they are for conventional supplies – of which we’re fast running out. The top 5 shale gas plays in the United States, which account for 80% of all shale gas production, are seeing an 84% decline rate over 3 years. That means that while plays like Petronas’ north of Fort St. John, BC, are pumping out large volumes today, they may quickly dwindle.
These are US figures – we won’t know until more specific BC wellhead data is analyzed just what decline rates look like here. Nevertheless, this should ring some alarm bells.
Mr. Hughes says that just for America’s shale gas production to remain flat – keeping ahead of these huge fall-off rates – would require 7,600 new fracking wells every year, at a cost of $42 billion. So Mr. Razak’s $36 Billion might not go as far as he thinks.
LNG’s exploding costs
It’s not clear how earlier discussion of a $20 Billion investment in BC gas infrastructure ballooned to $36 Billion with this announcement, but it may be a prudent reassessment.
This kind of infrastructure has a history of ballooning budgets, as we can witness with Australia’s massively over-budget Gorgon plant, being built by Chevron. As of last year, the project had exploded to $52 Billion form original estimates of $37 Billion – and at that time it was still 18 months away from completion. So be prepared to chip in some extra ringgits on top of that $36 Billion.
Environmental issues
Most of this new gas would have to come from what Mr. Hughes calls “a very aggressive increase in the number of fracked wells in northeast BC.” Fracking has ignited a wave of protest around the world – particularly in the US – driving bans and moratoriums in dozens of jurisdictions. While concerns in BC have remained relatively muted so far, Canada is already seeing a strong reaction to the controversial practice.
Quebec passed a moratorium last year, and in New Brunswick, opposition from local aboriginal communities and their supporters is heating up fast, forcing a meeting with the province and RCMP. Quebec’s moratorium has led to trade strife, with a NAFTA challenge launched against the province last week.
In the Yukon, First Nations recently passed a resolution against fracking over concerns for its impacts on their water.
How long before BC joins this chorus of fracking protests? With evidence of water contamination and air pollution impacts mounting, can BC remain an opposition-free haven for shale gas for the decades Malaysia requires to recoup its investment?
Indigenous opposition
Surely, Malaysia’s energy advisors are aware of the impact First Nations opposition to the Enbridge Northern Gateway project has had on that proposed oil pipeline and terminal’s prospects.
While the perception is that BC’s First Nations are largely supportive of fracking and LNG so far, beneath the surface, there are already cracks forming.
I recently interviewed a hereditary chief whose nation is steadfastly opposed to all pipelines proposed to cross its territory, which includes Enbridge and two gas pipelines. Petronas may be able to skirt this particular 22,000 square km territory with its pipeline routing, but that assumes neighbouring nations don’t follow suit.
All it takes is serious opposition from First Nations at one of the many points along the gas’ trajectory to tankers on the coast and Malaysia’s massive investment will be put in real jeopardy.
Getting off on the wrong foot with disappearing river
Petronas still needs to receive environmental approval for its proposed pipeline and plant – and that may prove more difficult than it assumes.
After The Common Sense Canadian and other media outlets took the story public from a release by West Coast Environmental Law, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency agreed to extend the public consultation period on Petronas’ draft plan – acknowledging the mistake and inserting a proper map into the project description.
The terminal would indeed pose a serious threat to beleaguered Skeena salmon stocks, encroaching on important estuary habitat. Some upstream First Nations were forced to cut their food fishery this year for the first time in memory as a result of collapsing stocks.
The message to Malaysia is this: Canadians care a great deal about their salmon. Don’t expect this plant to sail through environmental assessment, and even if it does, don’t expect an easy ride.
Treading on Bear Country
Petronas faces another environmental battle over its proposal – the plan to bisect a the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Sanctuary. This special section of protected bear habitat lies in the path of Petronas’ proposed pipeline to the coast, a fact that has angered some of the province’s top bear biologists and already stirred up controversy in the media. Petronas should ask Enbridge about its experience infringing on BC’s Great Bear Rainforest to get some idea what kind of backlash awaits their project over the pipeline route.
Finally, with local air pollution concerns being raised and citizens beginning to delve into the enormous potential impacts of LNG – as I observed on a recent speaking tour through five northwest BC communities – companies like Petronas will face mounting opposition to their plans.
A little food for thought for Prime Minister Razak before he plunks down all those ringgits.
