Tag Archives: Oil and gas

Gasoline spill likely killed thousands of Goldstream River salmon

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Fromt he Times-Colonist – April 17, 2011

by Kim Westad

Thousands of salmon are expected to have been killed by a large
gasoline spill that poured into Goldstream River during the weekend.

A Columbia Fuels truck smashed into the rock face and rolled, damaging the cab and one of the two tanks the engine was pulling.

About
40,000 litres of gasoline are estimated to have been spilled and much
of that flowed into the river at the side of the highway. The truck hit
the rock wall beside a small waterfall that flows across the road to the
river, and that helped move the gas.

“Gasoline is very toxic to aquatic life,” said Graham Knox, the Ministry of Environment’s manager of environmental emergencies.

Ministry
biologists, an oiled-wildlife specialist and staff from Environment
Canada were on the scene Sunday conducting an assessment of the site.
There was little apparent damage at the site itself, but as they moved
downstream toward the estuary, they saw “hundreds” of dead fish in the
water, Knox said.

With that many visible to the eye, the number killed will be significantly higher, he said — likely in the thousands.

“It is a significant amount of fish that have been killed,” he said.

Gasoline
travels and kills quickly in water. The fish would likely have died as
soon as the gasoline went into their gills, Knox said.

The
ministry tries to collect the dead fish, Knox said, so that other
animals don’t eat them and potentially ingest contaminants. It’s
unlikely the fish ingested the gas, he said, although that will be
reviewed.

Gasoline is more toxic to wildlife than other types of
oil, Knox said. The only positive is that being lighter, it evaporates
quickly and breaks up. Crude oil is more persistent and difficult to
cleanse from the environment.

Small excavators were on scene Sunday at the dump site, removing the roadside soil. It will be replaced.

The
Environmental Management Act specifies that the party at fault is
responsible for much of the remediation costs. Columbia Fuels has been
“very co-operative from the start” on that, Knox said.

“They are proceeding with all of our requests and getting the work done.”

Columbia
will hire an environmental consultant to conduct various tests of the
soil and submit a report to the Ministry of Environment, Knox said.

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New York Times: Fracking Chemicals Were Injected Into Wells, Report Says

Energy and Resources, Fracking, Oil&Gas, Water and Hydrocarbons,
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From the New York Times – April 16, 2011

by Ian Urbina

WASHINGTON — Oil and gas companies injected hundreds of millions of
gallons of hazardous or carcinogenic chemicals into wells in more than
13 states from 2005 to 2009, according to an investigation by
Congressional Democrats.

 The chemicals were used by companies during a drilling process known as
hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, which involves the high-pressure
injection of a mixture of water, sand and chemical additives into rock
formations deep underground. The process, which is being used to tap
into large reserves of natural gas around the country, opens fissures in the rock to stimulate the release of oil and gas.

Hydrofracking has attracted increased scrutiny from lawmakers and
environmentalists in part because of fears that the chemicals used
during the process can contaminate underground sources of drinking
water.

“Questions about the safety of hydraulic fracturing persist, which are
compounded by the secrecy surrounding the chemicals used in hydraulic
fracturing fluids,” said the report, which was written by
Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California, Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Diana DeGette of Colorado.

The report, released late Saturday, also faulted companies for at times
“injecting fluids containing chemicals that they themselves cannot
identify.”

The inquiry over hydrofracking, which was initiated by the House Energy and Commerce Committee
when Mr. Waxman led it last year, also found that 14 of the nation’s
most active hydraulic fracturing companies used 866 million gallons of
hydraulic fracturing products — not including water. More than 650 of
these products contained chemicals that are known or possible human
carcinogens, regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, or are listed
as hazardous air pollutants, the report said.

A request for comment from the American Petroleum Institute about the report received no reply.

Matt Armstrong, an energy attorney from Bracewell & Giuliani that
represents several companies involved in natural gas drilling, faulted
the methodology of the congressional report released Saturday and an
earlier report by the same lawmakers.

“This report uses the same sleight of hand deployed in the last report
on diesel use — it compiles overall product volumes, not the volumes of
the hazardous chemicals contained within those products,” he said.
“This generates big numbers but provides no context for the use of these
chemicals over the many thousands of frac jobs that were conducted
within the timeframe of the report.”

Some ingredients mixed into the hydraulic fracturing fluids were common
and generally harmless, like salt and citric acid. Others were
unexpected, like instant coffee and walnut hulls, the report said. Many
ingredients were “extremely toxic,” including benzene, a known human
carcinogen, and lead.

Companies injected large amounts of other hazardous chemicals, including
11.4 million gallons of fluids containing at least one of the toxic or
carcinogenic B.T.E.X. chemicals — benzene, toluene, xylene and
ethylbenzene. The companies used the highest volume of fluids containing
one or more carcinogens in Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas.

The report comes two and a half months after an initial report by the
same three lawmakers that found that 32.2 millions of gallons of fluids
containing diesel, considered an especially hazardous pollutant because
it contains benzene, were injected into the ground during hydrofracking
by a dozen companies from 2005 to 2009, in possible violation of the
drinking water act.

A 2010 report by Environmental Working Group,
a research and advocacy organization, found that benzene levels in
other hydrofracking ingredients were as much as 93 times higher than
those found in diesel.

The use of these chemicals has been a source of concern to regulators
and environmentalists who worry that some of them could find their way
out of a well bore — because of above-ground spills, underground
failures of well casing or migration through layers of rock — and into
nearby sources of drinking water.

These contaminants also remain in the fluid that returns to the surface after a well is hydrofracked. A recent investigation
by The New York Times found high levels of contaminants, including
benzene and radioactive materials, in wastewater that is being sent to
treatment plants not designed to fully treat the waste before it is
discharged into rivers. At one plant in Pennsylvania, documents from the Environmental Protection Agency
revealed levels of benzene roughly 28 times the federal drinking water
standard in wastewater as it was discharged, after treatment, into the
Allegheny River in May 2008.

The E.P.A.
is conducting a national study on the drinking water risks associated
with hydrofracking, but assessing these risks has been made more
difficult by companies’ unwillingness to publicly disclose which
chemicals and in what concentrations they are used, according to
internal e-mails and draft notes of the study plan.

Some companies are moving toward more disclosure, and the industry will
soon start a public database of these chemicals. But the Congressional
report said that reporting to this database is strictly voluntary, that
disclosure will not include the chemical identity of products labeled as
proprietary, and that there is no way to determine if companies are
accurately reporting information for all wells. In Pennsylvania, the
lack of disclosure of drilling ingredients has also incited a heated
debate among E.P.A. lawyers about the threat and legality of treatment
plants accepting the wastewater and discharging it into rivers.       

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New Cartoon: The Unforeseen Consequenses of Natural Gas Fracking

Energy and Resources, Fracking, Oil&Gas, Water and Hydrocarbons, ,
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Check out the latest from our cartoonist Gerry Hummel. Hydraulic Fracturing, or “fracking” – a relatively new method for extracting natural gas – involves shooting a mixture of highly pressurized water, sand, and unknown chemicals deep underground in order to crack open shale formations to release gas. The value of the resource in BC has been pegged at $750 Billion – and while we’re going gangbusters to develop our local industry, concentrated in northeast BC, other jurisdictions throughout the US and Canada are putting the brakes on fracking until we have a better grasp of its ecological and geological consequences, and how to better manage the enormous volumes of water currently being used in the process.

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B.C. to continue ‘fracking’ for gas, despite bans elsewhere

Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Water and Hydrocarbons
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From the Vancouver Sun – March 30, 2011

by Jeff Lee

British Columbia has no worries about the controversial use of
hydraulic fracturing in natural gas production, even though other
governments have recently instituted moratoriums on the process, Energy
and Mines Minister Rich Coleman said Tuesday.

Earlier this month
Quebec halted the use of so-called “fracking” technology, which involves
pumping large volumes of water, sand and chemicals into shale gas
deposits to fracture the rock and force the gas into collection pipes.
Several U.S. states, including New York, and France have also halted the
use of fracking over concerns that not enough is known about the
long-term effects of the extraction method.

A number of
jurisdictions have worried that the method may lead to the contamination
of groundwater supplies and there have been periodic complaints from
neighbours, including allegations of gas seeping from domestic water
taps.

But Coleman said B.C. gas extraction companies have been
using fracking for many years without problems and have to meet what he
termed “the world’s most stringent environmental regulations.”

“I’m
actually pretty comfortable with the maturity we have in this
particular field,” he said. “I have seen nothing to date that would tell
me that we are not out front on all the environmental issues compared
to other jurisdictions.”

Doug Bloom, the president of Spectra
Energy Transmission’s western division, says he doesn’t believe
“fracking” in B.C. is as much an environmental problem as it is one of
access to sufficient water supplies.

“We know it has become an
issue elsewhere, but frankly … fracking is not a new technology,” said
Bloom. “We’ve been fracturing wells in Western Canada for decades and to
my knowledge there haven’t been any problems associated with that.”

Spectra
Energy, a Fortune 500 company, has five natural gas-processing plants
in B.C. In North America it has more than 30,000 kilometres of
transmission lines and more than eight billion cubic metres of storage
capacity.

Natural gas is one of B.C.’s most valuable resources.
This year royalties from gas exploration will deliver nearly $1.4
billion into provincial coffers. Nearly a third of Canada’s entire
natural gas reserves are in B.C. But it comes with the use of technology
that some opponents and environmentalists say has yet to be proven.

The
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives suggested in a recent paper the
long-term effects of fracking have yet to be understood.

And in
the Peace region, a group of residents called the Peace Environmental
and Safety Trustees Society has asked the province for a formal inquiry
into the health effects from sour gas wells.

But Bloom said the
use of fracking in B.C.’s northeast gas fields “has more to do more with
the water supply” than any long-term environmental concern.

“The
bigger issue in British Columbia is water use, what water supplies you
will use for fracking. Increasingly, what we’re seeing producers do is
recycle water so that they can reuse it and not use as much.”

He said Spectra isn’t concerned about the technology’s safety.

“We worry to the extent that the debate is informed and that it is science and fact-based.”

But not everyone is convinced that fracking is environmentally harmless.

John Walker, president of FortisBC, thinks B.C. will likely have to look at the impacts of the technology at some point.

“There
is a challenge. I think it is a challenge [of] how you manage this from
a regulatory point of view,” said Walker, whose company is the largest
natural gas distributor in Western Canada.

“You have to manage
the environmental impacts as you go forward and that is absolutely one
of the challenges that we have to work with.”

Bloom and Walker
were part of a Vancouver Board of Trade panel Tuesday that looked at the
benefits and business opportunities of natural gas in B.C. Both believe
natural gas production will lead to the continued development of new
forms of use, particularly in the area of transportation.

Fracking
has in recent years led to the revival of natural gas exploration
because it has solved a problem that has long vexed companies: how to
unlock gas trapped in shale deposits.

Ten years ago when B.C.
began to seriously expand gas exploration, it had a 10-year supply of
gas reserves, Coleman said. Now it has more than 100 years of proven
reserves in the northeastern part of the province, the Horn River and
Montney Basin deposits, and that doesn’t even include new reserves being
developed in the Liard, he said.

But that same technology has
also led to the development of numerous shale gas reserves elsewhere in
North America, with the result that the U.S. also has a 100-year supply.

As a result, gas prices have plummeted from a high of about $14 to $4 per gigajoule.

Walker,
who is not opposed to fracking, said the moratoriums against it in
other jurisdictions may have an impact on B.C.’s market.

“If you
curtail the use of fracking, there is no doubt that is the technology
and methodology that drove the ability to exploit these shales.

“I think we are going to have to find a way to manage it.

“Life
is always about trade-offs, whether we build a hydroelectric dam and
dam a river, whether we put windmills in bird migration routes. We’re
trading on that balance we have to strike between energy policy, the
environmental policy and economic outcomes.”

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Gasland Filmmaker Josh Fox in Lethbridge: Solidarity, determination needed to halt fracking

Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Water and Hydrocarbons
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From the Lethbridge Herald – March 25, 2011

by Sherri Gallant

Josh Fox, the Pennsylvania producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary
“Gasland,” told those assembled Thursday at a conference on fracking in
Lethbridge that stopping the controversial drilling practice will take
solidarity and determination.

The sought-after filmmaker explained
to the crowd – mostly First Nations people from the Blood Reserve – how
his movie began as a grassroots project that started when he was asked
to lease his land for natural gas. His investigations took him down a
road he hadn’t anticipated, and the project quickly evolved into a force
for change, the notoriety of which has brought him both praise,
criticism and outright attack.

Today, he’ll be filming segments in southern Alberta which could end up in the “Gasland” sequel he’s working on.

“These interviews were so compelling and the stories started to become
so vast, I started showing them to people, friends of mine, with a
little voiceover that sort of explained the situation, and they said,
‘what have you got your hands on here? You have the ‘Inconvenient Truth’
on your hands, you have to set some time aside and work on this.'”

It wasn’t an easy commitment to make. Fox’s film and theatre company had
several long-term projects on the go and the fracking iceberg showed
signs of being a hulking monster under the surface. But he knew he
couldn’t ignore it.

Hundreds of hours of interviews and 15 months
on the road later, the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival – an
immense coup.

“We were making a project for our friends, for our
neighbours, for our community, so that people could see what was
happening – and not just our community, but then our friends and
neighbours that we met in Colorado, and Wyoming, and Texas. So that they
had a resource, because information about what was happening with
hydraulic fracturing wasn’t available, it was scarce.

“Anyway, all of a sudden, everybody starts talking about fracking. The festival was a great success.”

Before long “Gasland” aired on HBO, was picked up in Canada, Australia
and the U.K. Fox has taken it on tour to 110 cities in all those
countries.

“I’ve witnessed such an unbelievable outpouring of
concern and support,” he said, “and resilience and integrity and dignity
on behalf of an enormous amount of people across the world. Hundreds of
thousands, if not millions who are right now directly in the crosshairs
of a huge natural gas development campaign that rivals anything that’s
ever happened before.

“I did find the same story again and again –
water contamination, air pollution, health problems, a sense that the
people had been lied to. And governments that were unresponsive to their
plights.”

People need to invest in and use renewable forms of energy, he said, and lobby their governments to make the same commitment.

“It’s no longer about ‘oh, don’t drive so much,’ or ‘conserve energy at
home.’ This is right here. It’s going to be a defining struggle for the
next 20 or 30 years. How do we get away from fossil fuels? We know we
have to. We can see what’s going on with climate change. We can see
what’s going on with all the toxic poisoning. The Gulf of Mexico.
Nuclear is the not the answer. The solar fields in Germany generate as
much power as that whole reactor in Japan.”
Every house, he said, can be its own power plant.

In a special naming ceremony after his talk, Fox was given the
Blackfoot name Ih Ka Mo Dahm (phonetic spelling), meaning survivor or
people who have survived. Elder Martin Eagle Child said it was chosen
not only because of the work Fox is doing, but because his father and
grandparents were survivors of the Holocaust.

The Blood Tribe
Conference on Fracking was organized by Kainai people in response to a
deal made by band chief and council with two oil companies to allow
fracking on two thirds of reserve lands. The deal came with a
$50-million signing bonus and potential for further revenue down the
road. A full slate of speakers throughout the day included Fiona
Lauridson, producer and director of the film “Burning Water,” which will
be screened tonight at 7 p.m. at the Lethbridge Public Library as part
of the International Film Festival.

Tribal officials have stated
they will go through every environmental step necessary to make sure the
drilling is safe. To date, no public notice has been made of any actual
applications to drill under the new agreement.

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B.C. shale gas holds promise of new era in resource investment

Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, WATER, Water and Hydrocarbons, ,
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From the Vancouver Sun – March 14, 2011

by Gordon Hamilton

METRO VANCOUVER – Locked within the shale deposits of northeastern
British Columbia lies a natural gas reserve of unparalleled wealth that
could push the province into a resource boom unrivalled since the
development 50 years ago of the pulp-and-paper industry.

This
resource is nothing more than individual, tiny bubbles of hydrocarbon,
all that remains of a single organism that lived and died in a
primordial sea and was buried in the mud millions of years ago.

But
the accumulation of billions of such organisms over time adds up to gas
deposits of 250 trillion cubic feet to 1,000 trillion cubic feet,
according to the provincial energy ministry.

How much of that is
recoverable is a work in progress as companies drill into it. But even
at today’s low price for natural gas of $3 per 1,000 cubic feet at the
wellhead, those reservoirs could have a value beginning at $750 billion.

And the more companies drill, the more gas they find.

“We
haven’t finalized booking the reserves in the shale gas plays,” said
Ken Paulson, chief engineer and deputy commissioner at the B.C. Oil and
Gas Commission. “We are still getting information from some of the plays
which allows us to refine our estimates as to how much hydrocarbon is
actually in these reservoirs. But it’s a lot.”

Energy Minister Steve Thomson said shale gas is becoming mainstream development for the petroleum industry in B.C.

“The
magnitude and nature of B.C.’s shale gas resources creates
opportunities for long-term development planning by both industry and
government,” he said in an email to The Sun.

Northeastern B.C.
contains four major gas formations: The Montney basin near Dawson Creek,
the Horn River and Liard basins northwest of Fort Nelson, and the
Cordova Embayment, east of Fort Nelson. But the promise of wealth that
they offer is tempered by several facts: They are far from North
American markets for gas; they are more costly to get out of the ground
than conventional reserves; and the way the gas is being extracted is
drawing growing public concern.

The shale gas deposits have
triggered a slew of deals worth billions of dollars as global companies
jockey to gain a foothold in this new resource gold rush. Petro China’s
$5.4-billion investment with Encana, for a 50-per-cent stake in one B.C.
gas deposit alone, is the largest, while South African synthetic fuel
producer Sasol’s $2-billion investment in two of Talisman Energy’s gas
holdings perhaps brings the most promise.

Sasol is a world-leader
in technology of converting natural gas to synthetic diesel, and it has
agreed with Talisman to conduct a feasibility study around the economic
viability of a facility in Western Canada to convert natural gas to
liquid fuels.

“It’s exciting, innovative stuff,” said Travis Davies of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

Development
of the shale gas deposits brings with it a whole new way of looking at
the province’s resource wealth. But it also brings questions on how the
gas is being extracted and whether it will trigger a round of
value-added investment similar to the sprouting of pulp and paper mills
that came when new provincial forest tenures and policies spurred
logging in Interior forests in the 1960s.

Or, will the gas simply be exported as a raw commodity, the equivalent of exporting logs?

The
province has three options: Tap into new offshore markets where gas
prices are higher, add value by converting it to liquid fuels, or use it
to generate electricity.

“We need to find new markets. There are a
number of projects on the books right now … such as a liquefaction
plant and possible export terminal in the Kitimat area. These projects
have big implications for markets for gas, not just for B.C. gas but
North American gas, ” said Paulson.

The potential for a
petrochemical plant converting gas to liquid fuel in the province’s
northeast is particularly tantalizing, but B.C. has no policy framework
to encourage a petrochemical plant here. It could be built in Alberta.

The
third alternative, using gas to generate electrical energy, is far from
being a perfect solution. It’s cleaner than coal, but is still a fossil
fuel releasing greenhouse gases, even if only half those of coal. But
when the price of gas rises above the equivalent price of coal, power
producers can switch back to burning coal.

To access B.C. shale
gas, companies use a technique called hydro-fracturing, or fracking, to
release the trapped bubbles, which can be in shale deposits one to two
kilometres below the surface. The technique involves drilling a vertical
well about 18 centimetres wide until it reaches the shale layer. The
drill bore then is gradually curved to horizontal, where it can go for
another two kilometres through the shale.

Water, sand and a lubricating solution are then pumped at high pressure into the well.

The
water pressure fractures the shale into tiny pieces, creating millions
of surfaces, which release their gas. The sand keeps the pieces apart
and the gas within the shale is then forced to the well by the pressure
of the rock above.

But fracking is raising concerns over the
chemicals being used and the wisdom of fracturing part of the earth’s
crust. (Some are blaming it for a series of mini-earthquakes in
Arkansas, a region that is generally quake-free.)

Further, environmentalists fears of contamination of the aquifer if gases or chemicals escape.

Last
week, the province of Quebec placed a two-year moratorium on fracking
in shale gas deposits in that province while it develops regulations.

Energy minister Thomson said the situation in Quebec is far different than here.

“This
is a province where oil and gas exploration has been taking place for
decades. Quebec, on the other hand, is only beginning to establish an
oil and gas sector,” he said in the email. “It makes sense for Quebec to
take a prudent approach as they do not have the background and
regulatory structure in place like we do.”

Paulson said the province has kept abreast of technological change by expanding its regulatory regime to include fracking.

The
Oil and Gas Activities Act, which came into effect last October,
contains regulations that specifically address drilling of shale gas
wells and hydro-fracturing, Paulson said. Water stewardship is addressed
in regulations and companies are required to dispose of chemicals
safely.

Companies keep their chemical solutions secret, saying
they are proprietary. It amounts to less than one per cent of what is
injected, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

The
commission does not require them to divulge their chemical mix, but
they must keep on-site a list of the chemicals they use in fracking. If
for example, cross-contamination by one fracture full of fluid extended
into an adjacent fracture created by another well, then the commission
would want to know what exactly is in the solution.

That has never happened, Paulson said.

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Tyee Special Report: In America’s Capital, a Fierce Fight over Oil Sands

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From TheTyee.ca – Match 14, 2011

by Geoff Dembicki

In the hallways and offices of America’s capital city, a
war is being quietly waged out of view of most Canadians and Americans.

The outcome will decide North America’s energy future and its impact on the planet’s climate.

The tactics are all the high pressure
persuasion and hard-ball politicking that tens of millions of dollars
can buy — many of those dollars contributed by Canadian taxpayers.

The war pits America’s largest
environmental groups against some of the world’s wealthiest corporations
and their “allies” in the Canadian and Albertan governments.

The battle line divides two viscerally
opposed camps: Those arguing that North America’s deepening dependence
on Alberta’s oil sands industry represents a pragmatic solution to
looming energy crises, and those who say relying on oil sands crude
marks an irreversible step closer to climate change catastrophe.

The prize, at end of the day, will be votes cast by politicians.

Will Washington’s legislators pass laws
that have the effect of opening the oil sands spigots wider, assuring
that Alberta’s bitumen crude increasingly, and permanently, flows into
the U.S. market?

Or will they legislate against high carbon
emissions fuel sources as a measure to reduce climate change? That could
severely constrict the flow of oil sands’ output into the U.S., dashing
the profit dreams of corporations — and some Canadian officials — who
have already bet hugely on providing bitumen-derived crude for American
consumption.

The Tyee goes to the story

With so much on the line, there has been
surprisingly scant coverage of how this battle is being waged and by
whom. Until now. Beginning today, The Tyee is publishing The War for the
Oil Sands in Washington, an in-depth, multi-part series that begins
with three stories this week and many more in the coming weeks.

The reporting comes out of months of research capped by a week spent
in Washington late in February, during which I interviewed oil sands
lobbyists, environmental advocates and the congressional insiders either
side hopes to influence.

What I found was an intense lobbying
campaign being waged by each camp, both battling for the sympathies of
Congress and the White House administration. The odds are clearly in
favour of the oil sands coalition, which holds enormous political
influence and has won major legislative victories on several fronts. But
the green coalition, especially with Barack Obama in power, has more
clout than its limited resources might suggest. 

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Environmental group is concerned about the potential dangers of the gas released in northern B.C. fracking operations

Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, WATER, Water and Hydrocarbons,
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From the Vancouver Sun – March 9, 2011

by Ben Parfitt

Early last year, an army of workers at a remote
natural gas operation in northern British Columbia set a world record
for hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” a procedure that is rapidly
becoming the norm in the global gas industry.

They pumped nearly
400 Olympic swimming pools worth of water along with 500,000 kilograms
of sand underground to fracture deeply buried shale rock, thereby
releasing its trapped gas.

As fracking becomes more common, people
living in natural gas-rich northeast B.C. are increasingly alarmed over
the associated public health and safety risks.

The pressure at
which water, sand and undisclosed chemicals is pumped below-ground is so
intense that it triggers tiny earthquakes. In using such brute force,
unforeseen and unwelcome problems can -and do -surface elsewhere,
problems that may include dangerous releases of gas containing hydrogen
sulphide, also known as sour gas.

Long before fracking arrived on
the scene, the health threats posed by chronic exposure to sour gas with
low levels of hydrogen sulphide were well known and ran the gamut from
irritated eyes to miscarriages. But it was the uncontrolled releases of
gas containing 300 parts per million or more of hydrogen sulphide that
filled people living in B.C.’s Peace River region with dread. Such
releases killed or seriously injured industry workers; caused deaths,
birth defects or miscarriages in cattle; forced people to abandon their
homes by dead of night; and led at least one school district to station
buses outside an elementary school in case sour gas escaped from a
nearby well site, forcing an emergency evacuation.

These and other
uncomfortable realities of living in the heart of B.C.’s natural gas
development zone, recently prompted a local citizens group -the Peace
Environment and Safety Trustees Society (PESTS) -to call upon the
provincial government to launch a formal inquiry under B.C.’s Health Act
to delve into the health risks associated with sour gas. The
justification for such an inquiry was laid out in chilling detail with
the assistance of Calvin Sandborn, at the University of Victoria’s
Environmental Law Clinic, and Tim Thielmann, an environmental lawyer.

The
initiative has since snowballed. Letters of support for an inquiry have
come from the Peace River Regional District, public health officers,
first nations and others. A common refrain in the correspondence is that
when it comes to key decisions on oil and gas industry activities -for
example, the locating of gas wells and pipelines that can release toxic
gas -public health officials are cut out of the loop. Yet it is they,
and the public they serve, who are forced to respond when things go
wrong.

Things most decidedly did go wrong in November 2009, when
failed piping at a gas well in the Peace region spewed 30,000 cubic
metres of gas into the air. Hydrogen sulphide levels in the escaping gas
were six times above lethal levels. The estimated eight-hour gas leak
forced the evacuation of 18 residents living near the community of Pouce
Coupe, killed a horse and resulted in at least one emergency
hospitalization.

B.C.’s Oil and Gas
Commission (OGC), which approved the well owned by Encana Corporation,
later concluded that frack sand corroded the pipes and caused the
potentially fatal leak.

Over the past three decades, at least 34
workers in B.C. and Alberta have been killed in sour-gas related
incidents and hundreds more disabled. By sheer luck, massive
uncontrolled sour gas releases in B.C. have often occurred far away from
local communities. In 2003, residents near Gao Qiao, in Chonquing,
China, weren’t so lucky. A sour gas leak there forced the evacuation of
64,000 residents and killed 243 people in what became a
25-square-kilometre death zone.

Escalating fracking activities
increase the likelihood of such leaks. As a recent OGC “safety advisory”
notes, high-pressure fracking operations have on at least 18 occasions
resulted in what are euphemistically called “communications” between
northern B.C. gas wells.

What this means is that fracking at one
well causes unwanted problems at another. In one such event, the same
type of corrosive frack sand linked to the Pouce Coupe disaster was
blown between two gas wells spaced 670 metres apart.

Under the
circumstances, members of the Peace Environment and Safety Trustees
Society should be lauded for being “pests.” By highlighting the public
health and safety risks associated with sour gas, they may force the
provincial government to do the right thing: Call an inquiry that is
clearly in the public interest, but most particularly in the interests
of the women, children and men who call the Peace River region home.

Ben
Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the B.C. office of the
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and author of Fracture Lines:
Will Canada’s Water be Protected in the Rush to Develop Shale Gas?, a
report for the Program on Water Issues at the Munk School of Global
Affairs.

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A gas station in Delta shows the recent surge in fuel prices

Oil Roller Coaster Gets Wilder

Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Water and Hydrocarbons
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With the price of oil
soaring in recent weeks, politicians around the world are scrambling
to react. The price of the benchmark ‘Brent’ crude oil has
increased by almost 90%
in just 12 months, to around $115 a barrel. Now some
speculators are betting that the price is headed towards $200
a barrel, which would spell global economic chaos.

In Spain, the
government has already moved to reduce the highway speed limit and
lower train fares to save fuel. In the UK, the Conservative coalition
government was proposing to increase the speed limit but is now
suddenly reversing course and looking to take sudden action to cut
oil consumption. According to the Observer,
UK energy secretary, Chris Huhne, says they don’t have much choice.
“Getting off the oil hook is made all the more urgent by the
crisis in the Middle East. We cannot afford to go on relying on such
a volatile source of energy.” The problem for the UK government
is that they were counting on cheap oil, and made no preparation for
anything else.

The fact is that our
governments were warned about the potential for a destructive cycle
of oil price spikes and economic crashes years ago. For example in
the wake of the 2004 oil price spike, the US Department of Energy’s
‘Hirsch
Report’ warned of exactly this likelihood. Hirsch
recommended an immediate crash program to reduce US dependence on
oil, noting that even 20 years would be a tight time frame to make
the necessary changes.

In 2005, the
International Energy Agency published Saving
Oil in a Hurry which focused on emergency
measures that could be taken to rapidly reduce transportation oil
consumption with some advance preparation. Recommended measures
include having plans to quickly create networks of bus and cycling
lanes. But it seems that most governments are not prepared, and are
now flailing about instead of implementing plans.

In BC, governments are
still acting as if oil was going to be cheap and plentiful forever.
Instead of taking logical steps to reduce oil dependency and protect
families from oil price shocks, the Campbell administration has spent
more and more on road and freeway expansions. For example, according
to Transport
Canada, in 2008/2009 the BC provincial government
spent over $2.2 billion on roads and Bridges, up from $1.2 billion in
2001/2002. Much of this was spent on roadway expansions. In
contrast, the provincial government reported spending only $660
million on transit and nothing on BC railways.

Some of these roadway
expansion projects, such as the Golden Ears and Port Mann freeway
bridges, are supposed to be paid for by tolls. But even before the
most recent oil price spike, traffic and toll revenue was far below
what is needed to break even on the Golden Ears Bridge so TransLink
funds have been diverted from transit to pay for a mostly empty
freeway bridge. The new Port Mann Bridge and freeway expansion
represents $3.1 billion dollars that could have been invested in
transportation for the future such as electric
trains, light rail and trolley buses.

The Port
Authority recently restarted plans to build another
container terminal on the environmentally sensitive
Roberts Bank in Delta, on the assumption that international trade
will increase drastically in the coming decades. Our ports have a
large amount of excess capacity after Port Metro Vancouver recently
increased capacity at Deltaport by 50 percent and a new container
port was opened in Prince Rupert. The director of SFU’s urban
studies program, Anthony Perl, maintains that with
increasing oil prices long-distance trade
will decline in the future rather than increase.

It is time to admit
that the age of cheap and easily accessible oil is over. The
remaining oil and petroleum gas is largely ‘unconventional’
supplies such as the tar sands. The cost of production of these
sources is high, but the environmental and social costs are even
greater concerns. For example, much of the gasoline and diesel we
burn in BC is now produced from tar sands bitumen – a process that
uses huge amounts of petroleum gas. Much of the gas burned in the tar
sands comes from BC and is extracted by hydraulic
fracturing or ‘fracking‘ which result in
widespread water contamination.

The problem is not only
that our politicians are not prepared to make the changes needed to
overcome our excessive oil dependence. It is also that as soon as the
oil price roller coaster heads down hill again, they will once again
try to convince themselves that nothing significant has changed.

Like with global
warming, our leaders are mainly not prepared to lead. Ordinary people
are going to have to propose real solutions and oppose the most
destructive megaprojects our politicians dream up – such as the
North and South
Fraser Perimeter Road freeways.

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Several injured in Alberta oil well blast

Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Tar Sands,
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From the Montreal Gazette – March 7, 2011

by Brent Wittmeier

EDMONTON — A 24-year-old man is in critical condition after an explosion at a sweet gas well southwest of Edmonton.

The
explosion happened at about 11:30 a.m. on Monday at a Husky Energy site
near the hamlet of Robb, Alta., said Occupational Health and Safety
spokesman Barrie Harrison. There were no fatalities, Harrison said, and
OHS is investigating the incident.

An air ambulance
transported a 24-year-old man in critical condition to the University of
Alberta hospital, said spokesman Cam Heke. Other patients were also
transported to Edmonton via fixed wing aircraft and ground ambulance,
Heke said.

The RCMP reports 12 injuries, saying patients
were transported to hospital in nearby Edson, Alta., by ground
ambulance. Three were sent to a burn unit in Edmonton. The Edson Fire
Department extinguished the fire, and RCMP secured the scene, said
spokeswoman Doris Stapleton.

The incident was caused by a
flash fire, said Graham White, spokesman for Husky Energy. The injured
patients were contract employees.

White called it “an extremely rare” occurrence and said the company has sent an investigation team to the site.

The
men were preparing to fracture the well with propane, said Energy
Resources Conservation Board spokesman Bob Curran. Fracturing involves
sending high pressure liquids down a well bore to cause fissures in
dense rock, allowing trapped natural gas to escape into the well and be
pumped to the surface. Curran said it’s common to use propane in
fracking operations.

He said no natural gas was released in the explosion.

The site is approximately 40 kilometres southwest of Edson and 265 kilometres southwest of Edmonton.

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