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