Tag Archives: Water and Energy

Clark Administration: Early Election, BC Hydro

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Rumors are flying as Christy Clark hits the premier’s office running, including an election for next September. This will happen if the premier decides that as time goes on her chances of winning will not likely improve.

The NDP leader will not have had much time to present his platform.

The NDP may emerge from their leadership convention snapping at each other – which is normal for them.

Premier Clark may have won the HST debate.

After some time in the Legislature, the new Liberal government, whose best argument is that Campbell has left, may present a new and better image even though they all participated in supporting him.

The downers are significant, one of which could be fatal – the combination of a strong NDP leader and a threat to the right wing by a John Cummins-led Conservative Party.

There is, of course, a huge issue Premier Clark wants to avoid until she has a mandate…it’s called BC Hydro.

Hydro, were it in the private sector, would now be heading for bankruptcy protection. And this leads to another rumor this time from Cope 378 (the union representing many BC Hydro workers) which raises the specter of BC Hydro being split in three and some if not all of the pieces being sold privately. An interesting fact is that when Hydro puts its case to what’s left of the BC Utilities Commission they conveniently overlook the some $50 BILLION in commitments to private power companies.

This raises the name Rich Coleman who is the new Minister of Energy and has made noises about holding Hydro’s feet to fire re: their proposed significant raise in electricity charges. Minister Coleman is seen as a tough, hard-nosed guy whose appointment is supposed to have telegraphed a message to a population not too keen about an increase in rates that BC Hydro will have to deal with.

I smell a rat – no offense Mr. Coleman.

If the minister truly wants the public t know about their energy company he will announce that he will release the cozy contracts virtually given to private companies and will do so immediately. He would restore zoning rights to local governments. He would make it clear that as government policy Independent Power Producers (IPPs) would receive no licenses and no environmental permits until the whole energy plan is out in the open. He would also restore independence to the BC Utilities Commission.

I don’t believe these things will happen because Premier Clark does not want the Energy policy and the ruinous, sweetheart contracts to be an election issue. My bet is that Coleman will mount some sort of inquiry which delays public debate until the election is, safely he hopes, behind him. Coleman will bob and weave and avoid. A combative man by nature – so I’m told – Coleman will bluster, equivocate, play the role of the Ink Fish and generally confuse the voting public.

This technique will be met with opposition from the Common Sense Canadian, opposition which will take Damien and me around the province. After recent events on Vancouver Island in Port Alberni and Tofino a couple of weeks ago, will be in Williams Lake and Quesnel this coming weekend, followed by the Okanagan the week after. By the time we’re finished we’ll have visited every region of the province carrying the message of the financial horror the government has visited on BC Hydro and showing the calamitous environmental damage this policy causes.

We will support politicians who stand for saving BC Hydro and our environment and oppose those who don’t. No more complicated than that.

But there is more to it than just that. We cannot with our limited resources fight all the battles under the environment ‘brolly but we stand with those who fight fish farms, battle to keep the ALR intact and stand by opposition to shipping Oil Sands crud by pipeline and tanker through BC and down its coast.

Does this mean we’re anti-business? An emphatic no! We’re against bad business.


Fish farms can stay if they’re in closed-containment. If the fish farmers say they can’t handle that we say this means you need BC to subsidize you by allowing you to ravage the environment and our wild fish. In effect, the damage that happens to our wild salmon becomes a dividend in the hands of foreign companies.

With pipelines one must remember that there are no risks involved but certainties waiting to happen. The consequences will be – not might be – horrific damage to our precious environment.

We stand shoulder with those who fight to preserve farmland. Quite apart from all other valid arguments, why would we, given what we see happening around the world, jeopardize our food supply?

Neither Damien or I support any political party and certainly not socialists. I ran and won against the NDP twice and if the circumstances were the same today as they were in 1975 and I was that young again, I’d do it all over again.

BUT…the issues we at the Common Sense Canadian are concerned with are not about left and right but right and wrong.

As we go into the campaign flat out, I hope you will support us as we battle to save our power company and our environment.

 

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Rich Coleman revisiting many a B.C. Hydro controversy

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Fromt he Vancouver Sun – March 15, 2011

by Vaughn Palmer

Newly appointed B.C. Energy Minister  Rich Coleman indicated Tuesday
that Premier Christy Clark has asked him revisit a number of
controversies regarding B.C. Hydro.

The list includes Hydro’s proposal to hike energy rates by 50 per
cent over the next five years, smart meters, and the exclusion of major
B.C. Hydro projects from scrutiny by the independent B.C. Utilities
Commission.

Coleman also said that he believes there needs to be a significant
improvement in communications between the giant utility, its board of
directors, executive suite “and the shareholder” — meaning the public,
via the provincial government.

He added that it is too soon to say what will be done about those and other matters.

Othat everything is on the table. Not having dealt with Hydro or energy matters before, he’s going in with a lot of questions.

Coleman made his comments during a media scrum on his way in to the
first meeting of the B.C. Liberal caucus since the swearing in of the
new premier and cabinet Tuesday.

His answers,  preliminary, as they were provided a possible clue as
to why Clark chose him and not returning B.C. Liberal MLA Blair Lekstrom
for the energy portfolio.

Lekstrom was serving as energy minister last spring when he resigned
from the cabinet and caucus in protest over the handling of the
harmonized sales tax.

He returned to caucus following the convention that chose Clark as
the new premier. He  was thought to be angling to be reappointed to the
energy portfolio.

But Lekstrom was closely associated with the energy policies of
departing Premier Gordon Campbell, many of them embodied in the Clean
Energy Act passed by the legislature amid great controversy last year.

By appointing a new minister, Clark was able to give him a freer hand
to revisit the policies– green energy, energy self-sufficiency —
 that have driven many of the rate increases, as well as the Campbell
decision to weaken the independent scrutiny of Hydro.

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News from Japan is not good for nuclear power proponents

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From the Vancouver Sun – March 14, 2011

by Stephen Hume

Exactly what’s happening with the nuclear emergency after the
magnitude 8.9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan last week isn’t
entirely clear, but whatever it is, it’s bad.

Bad for Japan’s
energy infrastructure; bad for those citizens unfortunate enough to live
in proximity to nuclear reactors damaged by the great earthquake and
very bad, indeed, for those who have been advocating for a renaissance
in nuclear energy here in North America.

Proponents of nuclear
power are likely going to have to limp back into the shadows where
they’ve been biding their time since serious nuclear accidents at Three
Mile Island in the United States and Chornobyl in Ukraine drove them
from the limelight.

It’s true that the probability of nuclear
accidents appears to be relatively low, but it also seems true that when
they do happen, they have the potential to be catastrophic.

And
so, it seems certain in the aftermath of the great Sendai earthquake of
2011 that North America’s nuclear industry won’t be ramping up rapid
expansion any time soon, at least not without fierce opposition.

That’s
not to say that there shouldn’t be a rational discussion of the nuclear
option as world energy demand rises inexorably. It is to say that the
promise of nuclear power will quite properly face a rising tide of doubt
and skepticism from the public.

When I last checked late Sunday,
estimates for the number of people evacuated from the country
surrounding Japan’s Fukushima complex of nuclear power stations
following a meltdown in a reactor core when cooling systems failed had
exceeded 200,000.

To make things worse, fears were growing that a
second meltdown in another reactor core was underway at Fukushima. Then
another emergency was declared at the nearby Onagawa nuclear power
plant.

The government was handing out anti-radiation pills while urging the public to remain calm.

Japan
is probably the best prepared nation on the planet for great
earthquakes and tsunamis. By comparison, British Columbia is woefully
behind the learning curve.

So witnessing the disastrous
consequences in Japan, citizens on the West Coast have every right to
doubt the security of any nuclear power infrastructure and earthquake
preparedness here.

There are half a dozen nuclear plants on the
U.S. West Coast -some have been decommissioned -where earthquakes of
similar magnitude to the one just experienced in Japan are not uncommon.

Since
1899, there have been five earthquakes of magnitude 8.0 or greater in
an arc ranging from Mexico to Alaska. There is disagreement over whether
the 1906 temblor was magnitude 7.9 or magnitude 8.3 but whichever it
was, it flattened San Francisco.

On the other hand, there’s little
argument over the magnitude 9.2 earthquake that occurred in Prince
William Sound, Alaska, in 1964 with a subsequent damaging tsunami.

In
1899, the North Coast experienced three great earthquakes over eight
days along the Alaska-Yukon border -the most powerful is estimated at a
magnitude of 8.0 -which spawned a 10.6-metre-high tsunami in Yakutat
Bay.

And in 1949, a magnitude 8.1 earthquake occurred just off
Haida Gwaii. Federal government records show the shaking was so severe
and prolonged that cows were knocked off their feet, a geologist working
with the Geological Survey of Canada reported being thrown to the
ground and unable to stand, and hundreds of kilometres inland, people
described standing on the street as being similar to standing on the
heaving deck of a ship at sea.

Should the public be concerned? Yes. And for Canadians, all this should be considered in one troubling context.

In
2008, when Linda Keen, head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission,
refused to approve a nuclear reactor at Chalk River unless emergency
backup power was installed for pumps cooling the nuclear reactor core,
the Harper government fired her.

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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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AbitibiBowater NAFTA settlement has privatized Canadian water, trade committee hears

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From The Council of Canadians – March 8, 2011

Ottawa – The record-setting $130-million NAFTA settlement with
AbitibiBowater has effectively privatized Canada’s water by allowing
foreign investors to assert a proprietary claim to water permits and
even water in its natural state, says trade lawyer and Council of
Canadians board member Steven Shrybman, in a presentation to Parliament
today.

“It would be difficult to overstate the consequences of
such a profound transformation of the right Canadian governments have
always had to own and control public natural resources,” says Mr.
Shrybman in his presentation to the Standing Committee on International
Trade, which is studying the AbitibiBowater NAFTA settlement from last
August.

“Moreover, by recognizing water as private property,
the government has gone much further than any international arbitral
tribunal has dared to go in recognizing a commercial claim to natural
water resources.”

In 2008, AbitibiBowater, a Canadian firm
registered in the United States, closed its pulp and paper mill in
Grand Falls-Windsor, NL. The company asserted rights to sell its
assets, including certain timber harvesting licenses and water use
permits. These permits were contingent on production. More importantly,
under Canada’s constitution they are a public trust owned by the
Province, not by private firms. So the Newfoundland government moved to
re-appropriate them as it has a right to do under Canadian law.
AbitibiBowater sidestepped the courts to challenge the Newfoundland
government.

“The case clearly put the concept of water as a public
trust on a direct collision course with treaty-based corporate and
commercial rights. However, rather than defend public ownership and
control of water, the federal government has agreed to settle
AbitibiBowater’s claim,” says Mr. Shrybman. “By stipulating that the
payment of compensation is on account of rights and assets, the
government of Canada has explicitly acknowledged an obligation to
compensate AbitibiBowater for claims relating to water taking permits
and forest harvesting licenses.”

By settling with the company rather than
challenging its case, we have no response from the federal government
to refute the company’s proprietary claims to water and timber rights,
explains Mr. Shrybman. The settlement also fails to identify the
particular rights for which compensation will be paid, and makes no
attempt to exclude any of the company’s claims, “thereby acknowledging
the validity of the claims.”

“Moreover, by recognizing a proprietary
claim to water taking and forest harvesting rights, Canada has gone
much further than any international tribunal established under NAFTA
rules, or to our knowledge, under the rules of other international
investment treaties,” he says.

A statement by the government that the settlement shall
not set a precedent is “entirely ineffective,” because of NAFTA’s
National Treatment clause which grants foreign companies treatment no
less favourable than national companies in like circumstances.

“It is not therefore an overstatement to describe the
consequences of this settlement as effectively representing a
coup-de-grace for public ownership and control of water and other
natural resources with respect to which some license or permit had been
granted.”

Shrybman suggests water takings by tar
sands operations in Alberta, a golf course in Ontario or a water
bottling plant in Quebec are other examples of where even a partial
recovery of water rights by the provinces could detrimentally affect
business. If any of these companies were foreign owned they could claim
compensation on the same terms granted AbitibiBowater.

***

The Council of Canadians strongly believes there is no
place in existing or future trade agreements for such overstretching
investment protections. It has repeatedly called on the federal
government to reopen NAFTA to remove the investor-to-state dispute
process. The Council also recently joined several other Canadian
organizations in writing to all members of the European Parliament
urging them to reject the inclusion of NAFTA-like investment
protections in the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement
(CETA), which could be signed by the end of the year.

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Vancouver Sun Still Reluctant to Take on IPPs

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The Vancouver Province has, belatedly to be sure, attacked the BC Energy policy and called it “folly”. I felt it might be appropriate, then, to offer an op-ed article to the Vancouver Sun, which I did on March 1 and which I followed up on March 6 by emails to Fazil Milhar, the Vancouver Sun editor in charge of their editorial page. Having not even received the courtesy of a reply I sent another email Friday last saying that if I didn’t receive a reply by the 14th I would feel at liberty to make all this known.

My letters have been polite and respectful and merely asked for the opportunity his pages give to the BC Fish Farmers, for example.

Mr. Milhar was policy analyst for the Fraser Institute for several years. There’s nothing wrong with that except to say that putting a person with such deep right wing biases in charge of what opinions will be printed on the op-ed page of the Vancouver Sun seems unfair.

In fact, it is unfair. Surely the op-ed page is to allow all sides if the issue to have their say and refusing us is patently unfair and, in the absence some other explanation we must conclude that Mr. Milhar’s right wing beliefs are taken out against beliefs he doesn’t agree with.

Unlike Mr. Milhar, we at The Common Sense Canadian would be pleased to have him contribute his views to our website.  

What ever happened to the tough reporter, the fearless columnist, the editor and publisher who held authority to account?

Why is it the fourth estate has become part of the “establishment”?

Did it start in Canada with the Meech Lake/Charlottetown Accords when Brian Mulroney declared that to oppose these plans would be almost treasonous?

In the Charlottetown Accord debate one of the large Central Canadian media companies, MacLean/Hunter actually signed on to the “Yes” side; so much for its journalistic integrity!

Here were two efforts to change the country dramatically and no newspaper, TV outlet or radio station would even question the issues with a faintly jaundiced eye –  I must except radio station CKNW where I broadcasted. Even then, though my program kept the 50-50 balance CKNW put on a well known pro-Charlottetown person to counteract my forthcoming editorial. So even they were onside Mulroney’s packages.

I don’t believe that a free society with this kind of media can remain free; an unquestioning media that persists in the US and to an increasing degree in UK “journalism” erodes democracy.

Is the Internet the answer?

The trouble is that the Internet is so messy with blogs by the gazillion on every manner of question.

The hope is that more solid Internet outlets, like TheTyee.ca and, of course our home at TheCanadian.org, both for which I write, will become better and better known. The Internet’s problem is that major advertisers are leery that the free speech associated with the Internet will hurt them. That will change for as the mainstream media declines, so will advertisers’ interest in it.

The big advantage of a website is that its stories are archived. While today’s newspaper is quickly put on the bottom of the birdcage, we’re there for a long time.

My sense of it is that main street “journalism” will continue its slow but steady downward slide to the profit of free papers like Metro, 24 hrs, and websites like The Tyee and The Common Sense Canadian.

It’s ironic, having gone through all that pain of new printing technology, that now, as technology increases, the newspapers decline.

For us at The Common Sense Canadian we know that we can and do make the Internet work when people who support us pass our columns and documentaries to others asking them to do the same.

With the refusal of Mr. Milhar to even deal with my request we must continue and expand our efforts to be our own media.

It works. 

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Rafe Mair Visits Williams Lake

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From the Williams Lake Tribune – March 11, 2011

Author and social commentator Rafe Mair and documentary film maker
Damien Gillis will be in Williams Lake March 25 for a town-hall style
presentation on their new online non-profit journal The Common Sense Canadian — a voice for the public and environment.

Mair and Gillis are touring 30 B.C. communities and
will make their presentation in the Williams Lake secondary commons
theatre from 7 to 9 p.m. on March 25.

The two-hour event will feature Gillis’ new short documentary on the proposed Enbridge pipeline to B.C.’s North Coast, called Oil in Eden, plus a keynote speech by Mair.

There will also be an opportunity for the audience to
ask questions and discuss issues with the speakers on topics such as
rivers, hydro bills, oil tankers and democracy.

“These aren’t matters of left and right, but of right and wrong,” Mair says.

“It’s time for common-sense Canadians to band together —
through our own media and community organizing — to address our
greatest challenges: protecting our environment and democracy.”

Mair adds: “We can be the generation that lost B.C., or together we can be the one that saved it.”

Mair is a former lawyer and minister responsible for constitutional affairs in the Bennett cabinet during the 1980s.

He went on to become a broadcaster and writer on public affairs.

His commentaries and books have been punctuated with what has been called his “wicked sense of humour.”

Books include The Last Cast about fly fishing; Canada: Is Anyone Listening?; Rants Raves and Recollections that made the B.C. best seller list; Still Ranting; and Rafe: A Memoir.

The event is co-presented by the Council of Canadians Williams Lake Chapter.

Admission is by donation.

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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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Magma Energy, Plutonic Power Merge

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Fromt he Vancouver Sun – March 8, 2011

by Gordon Hamilton

Vancouver geothermal energy company Magma Energy has agreed to buy Plutonic Power in a share-swap deal worth about $190 million.

The
purchase will create a new entity, to be named Alterra Power Corp.,
with diversified operations and better access to capital markets, two
key ingredients to grow the company, Magma chief executive officer Ross
Beaty said Monday in a conference call with financial analysts.

“Size really does matter,” Beaty said. “The power business is all about the cost of capital.”

He
said Alterra intends to develop new energy sources either within Canada
or internationally, whatever provides the best return to shareholders.

Alterra
Power will have a market capitalization of $575 million and operations
in four alternative energy sectors — geothermal, wind, hydro and solar.

Shareholders of both companies must agree to the merger at meetings expected to be held next month.

Magma
operates geothermal plants in Nevada and Iceland and has a portfolio of
properties in the western U.S., Iceland and Latin America.

Plutonic
operates a run-of-river hydro project at Toba Montrose near the head of
Toba Inlet, which went into operation last year, and a wind farm at
Dokie Ridge near Chetwynd, which has only just come onstream. It also
has plans to acquire three solar projects in Ontario from First Solar
Inc.

The $190-million valuation is based on Magma’s closing price
Friday of $1.20 a share and the 65.4 million Plutonic shares
outstanding. Plutonic shareholders are to receive 2.38 Magma shares for
each Plutonic share.

Beaty said the acquisition should allow the
new company access to lower-cost capital but the expansion into other
alternative energy sectors gives Alterra Power better opportunities to
grow.

“Geothermal is a relatively tough business,” Beaty said,
noting that geothermal has lower capital costs but the best geothermal
sites are already either developed or already staked out by energy
companies for future development.

“Plutonic adds opportunities to grow in other sectors,” he said.

The
combined company will be producing 366 megawatts of power — Magma’s
existing 198 megawatts and Plutonic’s 168 megawatts. Beaty said the new
company expects to be producing 900 megawatts by 2016.

Plutonic
president Donald McInnes said the deal helps Plutonic as it opens up
access to capital. Plutonic needs between $80 million and $100 million
for expansion projects at Upper Toba and Dokie.

“This gives us the
opportunity to pick the best project in the development pipeline
between the two companies and deploy capital to provide the best
returns,” he said.

Both alternative energy companies have
liquidity issues, and the all-stock deal makes sense because it gives
them scale in a sector where capital costs are high, said analyst Ike
Kaja of Salman Partners.

The all-share deal gives Plutonic
shareholders a premium of 32 per cent over a 20-day weighted average
share price on the Toronto stock exchange, but more important, said
Kaja, it provides shareholders with opportunities for growth.

“Plutonic
had reached the point where it needs to go outside B.C.,” he said. “I
wasn’t too thrilled about the price but since this is an all-stock
transaction, you have two good companies coming together. It improves
scale of economies and you still have the ability to participate on the
upside.”

Beaty told analysts the recent spike in oil prices is going to turn market attention once again to alternative energy projects.

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First to Profit from $1 Billion Smart Meter Program: Liberal Insiders

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From TheTyee.ca – March 7, 2011

by Will McMartin

British Columbians frustrated by a looming 50 per cent increase
in their monthly power bills probably will feel no happier knowing that
BC Hydro intends to spend much of its newfound revenues on a $1 billion
Smart Metering Program to monitor every consumed kilowatt.

Well, here’s something that will make ratepayers feel even worse.

The very first smart meter contract BC
Hydro has awarded — $73 million to install up to 1.8 million of the new
devices — went to a company with close ties to the BC Liberals.
Indeed, that company is directly connected to a BC Hydro director.

The troubling trail of interlocking relationships starts with Tracey McVicar. She was named to the Crown corporation’s board of directors a little over three years ago.

While in her early twenties, in 1990,
McVicar earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from UBC and quickly went
to work in the investment banking division at RBC Dominion Securities.

Not long after, she left to join a
Vancouver-based brokerage, Goepel, Shields and Partners. By 1997, she
had become a partner at the firm and a member of its board of directors.

Goepel, Shields and Partners was bought in
2001 by Raymond James Financial Ltd., the Florida-headquartered
financial services behemoth, and two years later McVicar left to head up the Vancouver office of CAI Capital Management Ltd.

David Emerson ‘a longstanding investor’

CAI is a central link in this chain, as we shall see, so here’s a backgrounder.

A private firm that raises funds from select investors, CAI then uses that capital in a variety of ways, but usually by taking
equity positions in mid-size companies with the expectation of outsized
returns on their initial investment.

CAI was founded in 1989 by seven
well-heeled investors, including a couple of ex-Salomon Brothers
partners in New York, plus a prominent Montreal businessman, David
Culver, a former CEO with Alcan Aluminum Ltd.

In 1999, CAI bought a position in a well-known
but under-capitalized B.C. entity, MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates.
The investment firm obtained at least one seat on the MDA board, and it
was filled by Brooklyn-based Peter Restler, a founding CAI partner.

Restler has had a several decades long
relationship with B.C. politicians and well-heeled British Columbians.
One such prominent Vancouver businessman is Peter Bentley, the long-time
head of Canfor Corporation, who was an early investor in CAI.

In August 2001, David Emerson, then CEO at Bentley’s Canfor, joined the MacDonald Dettwiler board.

And if Emerson was not already an investor in CAI’s exclusive funds, he soon became one.

That information was disclosed on Nov. 24,
2008, when it was announced that Emerson — who just weeks earlier had
quit federal politics rather than seek re-election as a Conservative MP
in Vancouver East — had been hired (see here and here) by Restler, McVicar and CAI as a “senior advisor” at the equity firm’s Vancouver office.

Posted on CAI’s website is a wire story that features
the following sentence: “Emerson has also been a longstanding investor
in CAI, said Tracey McVicar, a managing director of CAI, who declined to
elaborate on the timing and amount of his investments.”

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