This article also appears on Policy Note.

BC Hydro officials were so alarmed by an earthquake that shook the ground at its sprawling Site C dam construction project in late November, they ordered a halt to all work and got on the phone to British Columbia’s Oil and Gas Commission (OCG).

The 4.5 magnitude earthquake was linked to natural gas company fracking operations and was among the most powerful to rock the region in recent years.

And it raises questions about what other infrastructure — bridges, schools, hospitals, to say nothing of homes — may be at risk from fracking operations.

Two wells ‘in the process’ of being fracked shook Site C dam

Site C is the most expensive public infrastructure project in British Columbia’s history.

Its estimated costs have ballooned to $10.7 billion partly due to delays during early work phases when “tension cracks” opened on the partially excavated slopes along the river. The slopes are notoriously unstable as underscored by a spectacular landslide last fall that threatened the community of Old Fort, just downstream from the dam construction site.

The earthquake began at dusk on November 29 and was felt throughout the Peace region. It shook residents at their dinner tables in communities from Charlie Lake to Pouce Coupe nearly 100 kilometres southeast and points in between including Hudson’s Hope, Fort St. John, Taylor, Dawson Creek, Farmington and Chetwynd.

BC Hydro told the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) that it ordered workers at Site C to down tools when the quake began and that a conference call took place early the next morning between BC Hydro and Oil and Gas Commission officials.

During the call, the commission, which approves all oil and gas industry activities including fracking, shared details on the quake that would not become general knowledge until days later.

“The Oil and Gas Commission provided BC Hydro with its initial findings, which included the earthquake’s epicentre, magnitude and peak acceleration measurements from one nearby instrument. The OGC also informed us that two [natural gas] wells were in operation at the time of the earthquake and that those operations were immediately suspended,” BC Hydro spokesperson Mora Scott wrote in emailed responses to questions from the CCPA.

Scott went on to say that the two wells were “in the process” of being fracked when the earthquake began and were located on a large “multi-well” pad where numerous gas wells had been drilled prior to fracking by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL).

The two CNRL wells were identified as “G” and “H” and were located “about 20 kilometres from Site C,” Scott said.

Earthquakes rattle homes in Farmington

BC Hydro and the Oil and Gas Commission mutually agreed three years ago to limit fracking within five kilometres of Hydro’s Peace River dams and reservoirs, out of concern they could be damaged by brute-force fracking operations, which involve pumping immense amounts of water, sand and chemicals into the earth to “liberate” trapped natural gas and oil.

The November earthquake occurred in the “Lower Montney,” the most actively drilled and fracked region in northeast B.C.

Parts of the Montney are rich in condensate, a liquid that flows to the surface along with natural gas following fracking and that is used by Alberta oilsands companies to dilute unrefined bitumen so that it can be piped to refineries.

From the early spring of 2017 through the winter of 2018, farming families in the rural enclave of Farmington near where CNRL and other companies frack experienced five “felt events” — commission jargon for earthquakes that shook residences.

Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

In May 2018, following that cluster of fracking-induced earthquakes, the commission issued an “industry bulletin” instructing fracking companies operating near Farmington to follow new rules. The area was rechristened “the Kiskatinaw Seismic Monitoring and Mitigation Area.” The Kiskatinaw River is nearby and is a major source for the water used in local fracking operations.

The new rules anticipated that more earthquakes would occur and that more risks likely lay ahead.

Rather than embrace the precautionary principle and exclude fracking operations from occurring nearby local farms and homes, the Oil and Gas Commission opted to try to manage the risks instead by requiring companies to immediately halt any fracking operation if it triggered a magnitude three or greater earthquake. After that, no fracking could resume “without the written consent of the Commission.”

In response to questions from the CCPA, the commission said that the suspension of CNRL’s fracking operations remains in effect, nearly four full months after the November earthquake.

“CNRL’s hydraulic fracturing operations targeting the lower Montney formation within the specified area remain suspended pending the results of a further detailed technical review,” wrote Lannea Parfitt (no relation to the author), the commission’s manager of communications.

“CNRL cannot resume operations targeting the lower Montney formation without written consent of the Commission.”

Parfitt said that CNRL was the only fracking company ordered to suspend operations, while other companies volunteered not to frack “for a period of 30 days” following the earthquake and pending the commission’s initial investigations.

“BC Hydro was consulted immediately after the event,” Parfitt added, and “all information pertaining to the November 29th event was transmitted to BC Hydro for their analysis.”

Earthquakes near gas operations, sour gas pipeline worry local residents

Jim and Pat Strasky live in the Farmington area with their son, Liam. After one “felt event” prior to the big shake of November 29, Jim discovered a crack in the foundation of the family home.

The Straskys have witnessed major changes to the landscape around their multi-generation farm. In recent years a handful of large gas processing plants have been built on fields that once grew wheat and canola crops. Elsewhere, wheatfields have been dug up to make way for giant water pits or large earthen dams to corral water used in fracking operations. Compressor stations and flare stacks are also common sights and a daily reminder of the industrialization of the landbase.

Jim Stratsky, who discovered a crack in the foundation of his home after an earthquake, pictured here with his brother near oil and gas operations in the Farmington, B.C., area. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

Liam was at home on November 29, Pat said in an interview.

“He was in the basement and he said the whole house just shifted, moved over. Everyone in the community felt it,” she said.

Pat added that “no one was pleased” with the shaking, particularly because it happened so close on the heels of a spectacular explosion at a gas pipeline near Prince George the previous month. The explosion and ensuing fire forced the evacuation of approximately 100 people. Footage of the inferno generated great unease in the Farmington area, Pat said, explaining that just about every farmer in the region has one or more pipelines running beneath their fields.

Some of those lines carry sour gas or gas containing the powerful neurotoxin hydrogen sulfide. People breathing sour gas can be knocked unconscious instantaneously and killed if the hydrogen sulfide content exceeds just 500 parts per million.

Could earthquakes rupture such lines? Pat asks. And if they could, what would that mean for local residents, including students at nearby Parkland Elementary school? Pat used to work at the school where she recalls one of the tools in the “emergency” toolkit being duct tape to seal doors and windows in the event of a sour gas leak.

Since the November 29 induced earthquake, investigative journalist and award-winning author Andrew Nikiforuk reported on an even more powerful induced 4.6 magnitude tremor near Red Deer, Alberta and on a induced 4.9 magnitude earthquake in China that may have killed four or more people.

The morning after the November earthquake, BC Hydro conducted “safety inspections” at Site C “to ensure the stability of all construction work and the safety of all site personnel before any construction resumed,” Scott said, adding: “Our inspections determined that no damage occurred on site as a result of the earthquake. We also have instruments that monitor the performance of excavations and other earthworks, and that did not record any changes or damages on site.”

About the same time the earthquake occurred, Michelle Mungall, B.C.’s Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, received a copy of a draft report from a three-person “science panel” that she appointed last March to examine a limited number of issues associated with fracking including induced earthquakes and the gas industry’s impacts on water resources.

What B.C. doesn’t know about fracking risks

The panel’s report was released Tuesday and flagged numerous concerns about the uncertainties associated with fracking.

The word “unknown” is mentioned 34 times in the document. The unknowns flagged by the panel include just how large a magnitude earthquake could be triggered by a fracking operation.

“The very rapid development of the shale gas in NEBC [Northeast B.C.] has made it difficult to assure that risks are being adequately managed at every step. Furthermore, the Panel could not quantify risk because there are too few data to assess risk,” the panel said.

The panel flagged that “now is the time to proactively address” the unknowns because of a planned Liquefied Natural Gas or LNG plant in Kitimat, which will dramatically increase the need for more natural gas drilling and fracking.

The provincial government strongly supports the LNG project.

Oil and Gas development near Farmington, B.C. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

In response, the government said Tuesday that it will need until the end of the year to come up with a “long-term action plan” in response to the panel’s recommendations.

Mungall’s ministry is responsible for both BC Hydro and the Oil and Gas Commission. When she struck the panel, she made no mention of BC Hydro’s long-standing desire to limit fracking operations in proximity to its dams and reservoirs.

Fracking operations encroaching on hydro infrastructure, warns dam safety manager

Those concerns first surfaced three years ago after BC Hydro released documents in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from the CCPA. The documents revealed that BC Hydro senior dam safety officials had serious reservations about fracking near its two existing Peace River dams and the Site C construction zone.

By far the largest dam in BC Hydro’s extensive portfolio is the W.A.C. Bennett dam. It impounds Williston Lake, the world’s seventh largest reservoir by water volume. Downstream of W.A.C Bennett dam is Peace Canyon dam, the second dam on the Peace River.

Peace Canyon dam is located in an area with known thrust faults, parts of the earth’s crust where two slabs of rock are pushed against one another under high pressure. During an earthquake, one slab can be forced up and over the other leading to violent earth shaking. BC Hydro dam safety officials know that two such faults begin downstream of Peace Canyon dam and run deep underneath the structure.

An email from Scott Gillis, BC Hydro’s dam safety engineer in the Peace River region, was part of the FOI materials and showed he was sufficiently alarmed by encroaching fracking operations that he warned senior staff at BC Hydro headquarters.

In a March 2013 email to Des Hartford, BC Hydro’s principal engineering scientist, Gillis noted that the subsurface at the Peace Canyon dam was similar to that around the Baldwin Hill dam near Los Angeles, which ruptured in 1963 damaging or destroying hundreds of homes and killing five people.

The Baldwin Hill disaster was later linked to oil and gas industry “fluid injection” operations and subsiding or sinking ground around the dam.

To avoid any such risks at Peace Canyon, Gillis proposed a solution to his BC Hydro colleagues: “Simply add buffer zones around any very Extreme and Very High Consequence Dams, where hydraulic fracturing cannot be undertaken without a prior investigation into the risks, and an implemented risk management plan.”

BC Hydro and the commission subsequently agreed that no new tenures or licences would be awarded to companies granting them further “subsurface rights” to drill and frack for oil and gas within five kilometres of Peace Canyon and W.A.C. Bennett dams or the Site C dam construction site.

BC Hydro and the commission also agreed that where natural gas companies already held such rights within five kilometres of the dams, greater caution would be taken.

“If future activity related to the existing tenures is planned, we will work closely with the Oil and Gas Commission to put restrictions in place to effectively manage risk,” Stephen Rigbey, BC Hydro’s then-director of dam safety, told the CCPA in 2016.

Rigbey said that at that time BC Hydro’s Peace River dams were built to high seismic standards and that the utility was not concerned that earthquakes triggered by fracking would bring the structures down or cause extensive damage. Rather, the utility was worried that the “carpet bombing” of increased gas drilling and fracking operations in proximity to the dams could lead to higher dam repair and maintenance costs.

An internal email from Stephen Rigbey notes research on the links between fracking operations and seismic events. Rigbey writes the oil and gas industry expects a massive increase of active wells, a “carpet bombing,” in B.C.’s Montney region.

Earthquakes skyrocket in lockstep with fracking

Despite the buffer zones, a number of oil and gas companies still have active subsurface rights nearby BC Hydro’s Peace River dams.

Mora Scott said one of those companies is Calgary-based Crew Energy, a company heavily invested in exploiting its Montney assets, particularly those zones rich in condensate.

Scott said Crew first contacted BC Hydro in January 2017 after the Oil and Gas Commission notified fracking companies of the new buffer zones.

“Since then, there have been a number of meetings between Crew Energy and BC Hydro. At these meetings, Crew Energy has updated BC Hydro on their proposed activities in the Site C area and provided summaries of observed seismicity during their well completion activities,” Scott said.

BC Hydro and Crew Energy officials met most recently at BC Hydro’s downtown Vancouver corporate headquarters on January 14.

Those meetings play out against a backdrop of marked increases in earthquakes in the vicinity of Site C.

Using an earthquake database maintained by Natural Resources Canada, the CCPA examined earthquake frequency over a 25-year period ending on December 31, 2018 nearby what is now the dam construction site.

Within 100 kilometres of the dam site there were 672 earthquakes in the past 25 years. Nearly 80 per cent of those events — 519 earthquakes in total — occurred in the past decade, a period that correlates with dramatic increases in gas drilling and fracking.

When the radius around the Site C site was narrowed to 50 kilometres, the total number of recorded earthquakes fell to 229. But the percentage of those events that occurred in the period’s last 10 years remained largely unchanged at 75 per cent or 171 earthquakes in total.

Of the 100 most powerful earthquakes to occur within 100 kilometres of the Site C location, 68 per cent — more than two in three — occurred in the most recent 10 years — a timeframe that again coincides with increases in drilling and fracking operations in the region.

A map showing oil and gas leases within a five kilometre radius of the Site C dam. This B.C. Oil and Gas Commission map was obtained through Freedom of Information legislation.

Gail Atkinson, an expert on induced earthquakes and a professor in earth sciences at the University of Western Ontario, says that induced earthquakes behave differently than naturally occurring earthquakes in part because they may occur closer to the earth’s surface and generate different ground motions.

If at all possible, she said any induced magnitude four earthquake should be at least five kilometres away from critical infrastructure such as a dam.

“Larger magnitudes you want to keep even further away,” she added.

Asked whether she thought buffer zones might be warranted around other infrastructure such as hospitals and schools, Atkinson replied:

“An interesting question. That’s a matter for a broader public policy debate.”

She said it would be “sensible” for regulators to ask such questions and to decide what constituted “sensitive infrastructure.” Once that was done, she said, then decisions could be made about what to do.

Regarding the November 29 earthquake and the two aftershocks, Atkinson said it was “entirely reasonable” to cease CNRL’s fracking operations and that during the shutdown regulators should carefully consider “what happened and are there things they can do differently so that it doesn’t happen again.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

A full public inquiry, with powers to call witnesses and gather research, is needed to investigate natural gas fracking operations in B.C., says a coalition of 17 community, First Nations and environmental organizations.

The group, which includes the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, David Suzuki Foundation, Public Health Association of B.C. and West Coast Environmental Law, is appealing to the NDP government to call a public inquiry — instead of the scientific review promised during the election campaign — because of mounting evidence of problems caused by fracking.

“We believe that the NDP’s campaign promise to appoint a scientific panel to review fracking won’t be enough to fully address the true risks of deploying this brute force technology throughout northeast B.C.,” said Ben Parfitt, a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, one of the organizations asking for an inquiry.

Fracking — or hydraulic fracturing — involves pumping large volumes of water into the ground at high pressure to break open rocks or fissures and extract oil or gas.

Problems include excessive water usage, induced earthquakes, poor consultation with First Nations and the proliferation of dozens of unlicensed, earthen dams, constructed by companies ignoring provincial water laws.

The BC Greens have called on the NDP to investigate the use of unapproved dams.

The use of fracking in B.C. comes with serious implications, Parfitt said.

“We have significant earthquake activity that is being generated in the northeast of the province, with the largest earthquakes associated with fracking operations occurring in B.C., and we also have strong indications that the amount of water that is being used, and subsequently contaminated, is at a level that is not seen anywhere else on the continent,” Parfitt said in an interview.

At a Progress Energy site near Fort St. John, where, in 2015, the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission confirmed a record-setting 4.6 magnitude earthquake was caused by fracking, the company was using eight times more water than used at operations anywhere in the U.S., Parfitt said.

Coalition Calls for Public Inquiry Into B.C. #Fracking https://t.co/wxylk6DXL9 #bcpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 6, 2017

“The water volumes are very, very significant and there is a correlation between the tremendous amount of water being used and the earthquakes that are cropping up,” he said.

BC Hydro has expressed concern about fracking in areas near major dams and a public inquiry could look at whether there should be exclusion zones, he said.

One reason for the excessive use of water in areas such as Montney Basin is to coax valuable gas liquids to the surface. The presence of the gas liquids is one reason fracking operations are increasing even though natural gas prices remain low.

Gas liquids include light oil, condensate, butane and propane. Condensate from the Montney Basin is used to dilute bitumen from the Alberta oilsands.

Air as well as water is affected by fracking and there is compelling evidence from the David Suzuki Foundation that more methane is venting into the atmosphere from oil and gas operations than previously reported.

“That is going to have a serious impact on our greenhouse gas emissions in the province,” Parfitt said.

Peer-reviewed research from the Suzuki Foundation found that methane pollution, largely from fracking operations, is 2.5 times more than reported by the industry and the provincial government.

Ian Bruce, Suzuki Foundation science and policy director, said the province must make controlling methane pollution a priority and then ensure the industry helps come up with solutions.

“Right now, we know that British Columbians are not getting accurate and transparent information about the real environmental damages from oil and gas activities,” Bruce said.

For First Nations, a major concern is unlicensed dams built on First Nations land without consultation.

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs president, said the dam-building free-for-all and effects of excessive water use by the industry is deeply troubling.

“There are still no substantive or meaningful opportunities to fully participate in decisions around how water resources are managed in our respective territories,” he said in a news release.

“We need a credible, strong, independent inquiry to get to the bottom of this,” Phillip said.

Among questions that need scrutiny are the public health effects, said Larry Barzelai of the B.C. Chapter of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

Recent U.S. studies have shown increases in premature births, asthma and congenital heart disease in people living close to fracking operations, Barzelai said.

“Can we be assured that the same complications will not occur in B.C.? We think that a properly funded public inquiry, with a comprehensive and strong mandate, is needed to answer critical questions such as these,” he said.

Public inquiries in B.C., such as probes into forest industry practices, have produced useful recommendations, but the gas industry has never been subjected to such scrutiny, Parfitt noted.

Among questions the group wants addressed are:

• The extent of consultation with First Nations and whether it meets standards set by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
• Public health and safety risks.
• Risks to the environment and water resources.
• Risks to critical infrastructure, such as dams.
• Increases in greenhouse gas emissions.
• Whether there is adequate monitoring and transparency by the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission.

During this year’s election campaign the NDP acknowledged there are questions about fracking and the party’s election platform said: “With the potential of significant expansion of gas production in the years ahead, we will appoint a scientific panel to review the practice to ensure that gas is produced safely and that our environment is protected.”

The review will include an assessment of the impacts on water and “given recent minor earthquakes in the area,” what role gas production has in seismic activity, it said.

So far, the government has not moved on the scientific review and the mandate letter, given by Premier John Horgan to Energy Mines and Petroleum Resources Minister Michelle Mungall, makes no specific mention of the review, although it could be encompassed in more general endorsements of sustainability and respect for First Nations.

Neither Mungall nor Green Party spokespeople were available to comment by deadline for this story. However, later Monday the Ministry of Energy and Mines sent along a statement from Mungall:

“The provincial government is attentive to the concerns expressed about hydraulic fracturing in British Columbia, and we respect the diversity of opinions shared with us by third parties and stakeholders.

“We will act on our commitment and appoint a scientific panel to review hydraulic fracturing in British Columbia. This will include looking at impacts on water and the relationship to seismic activity. Further details will be announced in the near future.”

In 2016, after a scientific study was published drawing a direct line between fracking and earthquakes in the Western Canada sedimentary basin, on the Alberta/B.C. border, Green Party leader Andrew Weaver called for a “moratorium on horizontal hydraulic fracturing until there is a better understanding of its risks.”

In a September interview with DeSmog Canada, Weaver said the problem was not so much the existence of fracking, but the free-for-all approach.

“The right approach would be to pause and reflect on the cumulative impacts of our wild-west approach to resource extraction here in B.C.” Weaver said.

The Green platform called for creation of a natural resources board, which could take a detailed look at the cumulative effects.

Image: Premier John Horgan tours the AltaGas Ridley Island propane export facility. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr

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A patchwork of roads, ditches and unauthorized dams are scarring First Nations territories in north east B.C. while water sources are being jeopardised by natural gas companies using hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of water for fracking, according to a study conducted for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

A sharp increase in fracking operations is underway in B.C. but First Nations have little say in decisions about how the companies operate on their traditional lands, finds the study, written by Ben Parfitt, CCPA resource policy analyst.

“Today, in the more remote reaches of northeast B.C., more water is used in fracking operations than anywhere else on earth — and substantial increases in water use will have to occur in the event a liquefied natural gas industry emerges in B.C.,” the paper states.

Fracking is the practice of pressure-pumping immense quantities of water, deep below the earth’s surface, to fracture rock in order to release trapped gas.

“It is easy to see how all that water use, which ultimately results in the water becoming heavily contaminated, poses increased risks both to surface waters and below ground or groundwater sources such as aquifers,” says the study, which points out that more water is used in B.C. fracking operations than anywhere else in the world.

A previous CCPA study found that, between 2012 and 2014, water use at fracked gas wells in the Montney and Horn River Basins, the region’s two major basins, climbed by about 50 per cent.

“Natural gas drilling and fracking operations have devastated local First Nations, steadily eroding their ability to hunt, fish, trap and carry out other traditional practices, which are supposed to be protected by Treaty 8,” said Parfitt, who last month revealed that dozens of unauthorized dams had been built in the same area to trap water used in fracking operations.

Parfitt found that two of the dams built by Progress Energy, a subsidiary of Malaysian-owned Petronas, were so large they should have been reviewed and approved by the province’s Environmental Assessment Office.

First Nations Bear Brunt of B.C.’s Sprawling #Fracking Operations: New Report https://t.co/4klbtq8lxJ @LavoieJudith @ccpa #bcpoli #LNGinBC pic.twitter.com/xaQbGmcxC4

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) July 4, 2017

In addition to the effect on First Nations lands, there is concern that fracking operations are known to trigger earthquakes and there is no guarantee that the dams are safe.

The B.C. Oil and Gas Commission found that, in 2015, fracking by Progress Energy, north of Fort St. John, triggered a 4.6 –magnitude earthquake.

Now, with growing concerns about the amount of water being used by the industry, it is time First Nations were given more control over what happens on their land, Parfitt said.

Although First Nations receive advanced notice of fossil fuel industry development planned for their territories, they have little influence on the timing, rate or location of company operations and there is growing frustration over the inability to look at cumulative impacts or what constitutes a reasonable amount of industrial activity within a watershed, according to the study.

Some First Nations are resorting to legal action and the Fort Nelson First Nation, a Treaty 8 signatory, succeeded in having a water licence within its’ territory cancelled while the Blueberry River First Nations is suing the provincial government for cumulative damages to its territory from multiple industrial developments.

Three-quarters of Blueberry River territory is just 250 metres away from a variety of industrial disturbances, according to members. The potentially precedent-setting case is likely to be heard next year.

The new NDP government in B.C., propped up by support from the Green party, has not made any promises regarding fracking in B.C. although a joint agreement signed by both parties vowed to honour the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Green party Leader Andrew Weaver has previously called for a moratorium on fracking in B.C. until the risks of the process can be more fully understood.

Parfitt said that, if B.C. is going to respect the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, there must be changes.

“To start, we need to end the current death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach, where First Nations are simply asked to respond to one proposed industrial development after another, and, instead, place First Nations firmly in the driver’s seat when it comes to guiding activities in local watersheds,” Parfitt said.

Meaningful consultation needs to take place well before activities occur, he said, noting that disturbance to the land for fracking operations ranges from logging to construction of wastewater containment ponds.

The report recommends that, instead of First Nations simply being asked to respond to government and industry referrals, the province should bring in new co-management regimes, with First Nations and government working together.

The system could be similar to that on Haida Gwaii, where the Haida Nation co-manages the Gwaii Haanas national park reserve and Haida heritage site with the federal government and co-manages forest resources on the north of the islands with the provincial government.

Other recommendations include:

• Setting maximum natural gas extraction limits on a watershed-by-watershed basis.
• Creating no-go, drill-free and frack-free zones, including protected areas where healthy, functioning ecosystems are maintained so that indigenous rights can be fully exercised.
• Charging more for industrial use of water, in hopes of encouraging conservation, and investing those funds in water studies and enhanced water protection.
• Requiring fossil fuel companies to detail exactly where they intend to operate over the long-term, so decisions on industry development and water withdrawals can be made in the context of cumulative regional impacts. The system would be similar to requirements that the logging industry give 20-year development plans detailing where they are proposing to build roads or log.

“There is an urgent need to embrace these recommendations — and more — in light of what First Nations contend with in the face of modern-day natural gas industry operations,” says the study.

“All natural resources, particularly water resources, are finite. They sustain lands and resources that First Nations have relied on since time immemorial. They must be managed with that in mind.”

Image: Caleb Behn, indigenous rights advocate, has fought for years to prevent the negative impacts of fracking on indigenous lands in B.C. Photo: Fractured Land

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Fracking has induced earthquakes in northwest Alberta, some of which have lasted for months due to residual fracking fluid, according to a new study published in Science today.

Earthquakes induced by fracking have been noticed in Western Canada for about four years, but this is one of the first studies to specifically identify the causes that resulted in “activation.”

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves sending a high-pressure mixture of water and chemicals underground to fracture the earth and release oil or gas.

The article, Fault activation by hydraulic fracturing in western Canada, was authored by two University of Calgary geoscientists.

David Eaton and co-author Xuewei Bao compiled a database of more than 900 seismic events back to December 2014, combining publicly available information with records provided by Canadian Discovery Ltd. and Repsol.

That was the first event exceeding magnitude 4 in the area of the Duvernay shale formation.

On February 19, 2015, the Alberta Energy Regulator issued an order requiring operators to shut down any fracking operations following seismic activity over magnitude 4 that occurs within five kilometers of the well.

The research was partly funded by Chevron Canada, which had to shut down operations at a well pad near Fox Creek in June 2015 due to a magnitude 4.4 earthquake.

A magnitude 4.8 earthquake shut down Repsol operations near Fox Creek, Alberta, in January 2016. A year earlier, a magnitude 4.4 earthquake was heralded as likely to be the largest fracking-related earthquake in the world.

There are two main causes of the earthquakes, according to the study.

The first is immediately related to the increased pressure as the fracking process takes place. In those types of earthquakes, activity stopped almost immediately after the operations ended.

“We were able to show that what was driving that was very small changes in stress within the earth that were produced by the hydraulic fracturing operations,” Eaton said.

However, the second and more “unexpected” learning was that one part of the fault remained “persistently active” for several months after operations, continuing to produce micro-earthquake activity.

Eaton says he and Bao were able to best explain that by the infiltration of “high-pressure fluids” from the frack operations into the fault, with the “pressure signature” from fracking slowly diffusing downwards until reaching a pre-weakened fault.

“The management of induced seismic activity for those two scenarios should be quite different,” he says.

“Induced seismicity” refers to tremors that are caused by human activity including mining, reservoir impoundment behind dams and withdrawals such as oil and gas production.

Eaton had previously concluded that between 90 and 95 per cent of seismic activity in Alberta over magnitude 3 in the last half-decade was associated with fracking and underground disposal of wastewater.

Unlike in Canada — where Eaton says a “majority of injection-induced earthquakes are actually linked to hydraulic fracturing” — most earthquakes in the central United States have been linked to large underground disposal of wastewater, a difference between operational and geological causes.

When it was in opposition, the Alberta NDP called for an independent review of fracking largely due to concerns about water contamination; then-leader Brian Mason noted that more than 1,500 fracking licences were approved by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) in 2013 and called for an investigation into the Fox Creek earthquake of January 2015.

However, a motion to debate a moratorium on fracking was shot down at the 2016 Alberta NDP convention. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have moratoriums  on fracking, while the federal government is currently being sued by Lone Pine Resources for Quebec’s fracking ban.

Eaton says he hopes the research will result in better regulation and risk assessment processes.

“Regulators are deeply engaged right now in working with industry and academics,” he says. “Our hope is that the new results that we published will help to contribute to science-informed regulations. We’re also hoping that it’s useful to industry as a way to better characterize risk and develop appropriate mitigation strategies.”

Photo: ©Garth Lenz

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By Ben Parfitt for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Efforts by BC Hydro to ban potentially destructive natural gas company fracking operations in the vicinity of its biggest dams fall well short of what an Alberta hydro provider has achieved, raising questions about why British Columbia isn’t doing more to protect public safety.

Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives show that BC Hydro officials have feared for years that fracking-induced earthquakes could damage its dams and reservoirs.

Senior dam safety officials with the public hydro utility even worried for a time that natural gas companies could drill and frack for gas directly below their Peace River dams, which would kill hundreds if not thousands of people should they fail.

“The Montney gas field has vertical stratification of subsurface [natural gas] rights, so there may actually be a number of different owners laying claim under our damsites,” BC Hydro’s director of dam safety, Stephen Rigbey said in an April 2012 email released in response to the FOI.

No Mandated Frack-free Zones Near Dams

Yet, after years of discussions with B.C.’s Oil and Gas Commission (OGC), which regulates oil and gas industry activities in the province, BC Hydro has obtained only modest commitments to prevent fracking near its two Peace River dams — the massive WAC Bennett dam, which impounds the world’s seventh-largest reservoir, and the smaller Peace Canyon dam downstream.

The restrictions, which BC Hydro’s director of dam safety Stephen Rigbey describes as “an understanding,” also apply to a third dam on the river, the controversial $9-billion Site C project, currently in pre-construction.

Both BC Hydro and the OGC say that the understanding is that “there will be no new tenures” issued to companies wishing to drill and frack for natural gas within five kilometres of BC Hydro’s dams. However, companies holding existing rights would not be prevented from doing so.

“If future activity related to the existing tenures is planned, we will work closely with the Oil and Gas Commission to put restrictions in place to effectively manage any risk,” Rigbey said in an email response to questions.

What those measures would be remains the subject of ongoing discussions. No restrictions are presently in place around any of the massive reservoirs impounded by BC Hydro’s Peace River dams or the lands that could one day surround the Site C reservoir.

In an email response to questions, the OGC said that at this point in time, the Ministry of Natural Gas Development “is not accepting any new requests for subsurface [natural gas] rights within 5 kilometres of the Site C construction area.”

The Commission went on to say that “there are no active hydraulic fracturing operations” within the five kilometres of BC Hydro’s Peace River dams but that there are “a small amount of existing subsurface rights issued within the 5 km buffer zone around Site C.”

“These were issued prior to the creation of the buffer. Any applications in that area, or elsewhere, go through a strict review process before permits are issued. The Commission is also talking with BC Hydro about any additional permit conditions that would be required to protect public safety and the environment in the area specifically, before construction occurs on Site C.”

The measures to date in B.C., fall well short of what Alberta hydro provider, TransAlta, has achieved. In interviews and correspondence with the company, TransAlta revealed that it has effectively shut down all fracking within five kilometres of one of its dams and also around the entire dam’s reservoir as well. And it has succeeded in imposing restrictions on potentially destructive fracking operations in a zone up to ten kilometres away from its damsite.

But, as is the case in B.C., there is nothing in writing to reassure members of the public — no regulation or government statement — banning natural gas companies from fracking near sensitive infrastructure such as hydro dams and reservoirs. Both provinces appear reluctant even to suggest that fracking is inappropriate in certain cases where public safety is concerned, perhaps fearing the precedent such an admission would represent.

“At this time there is no regulated/government mandated exclusion areas near critical infrastructure in Alberta,” says TransAlta’s chief media spokesperson, Stacey Hatcher. Rather, Hatcher says, an “agreement” has been reached to exclude some hydro dams and reservoirs from fracking zones.

Christy Clark’s Conflicting Agendas

BC Hydro’s modest achievements to date come as the Christy Clark government pursues two at times conflicting agendas. On the one hand, the government vows to push its Site C hydro dam, the most expensive infrastructure project in B.C.’s history, “past the point of no return.” On the other, it continues to aggressively push for Malaysian state-owned Petronas to invest billions of dollars to build a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) processing plant near Prince Rupert and to tarnish all those who oppose the project. Should such a plant be built, natural gas drilling and fracking near the Peace River and its hydro facilities would significantly ramp up.

In an April 2012 email, Rigbey likened potential fracking in the Peace to “carpet bombing,” and added that much of the anticipated fracking in future years would occur across the “well-established” regional stress regime.

Even if no such plant materializes in B.C. — an increasing likelihood given the recent announcement that another LNG proponent, Shell, appears ready to scrap its bid to build one — an upswing in natural gas prices would almost certainly result in increased gas drilling and fracking operations, including on lands alongside the reservoir that would be created by the Site C dam, which would flood more than 100 kilometres of the Peace River and its tributaries.

Documents filed by BC Hydro with a panel that reviewed the project for the provincial and federal governments noted that, even in the absence of fracking, nearly 4,000 landslides are expected to dump debris into the reservoir as a result of the Site C dam being built. The 676-page report that discusses those landslide risks makes no mention of additional risks to the reservoir should earthquakes be triggered nearby.

Martyn Brown, a former chief of staff to Premier Clark’s predecessor, Gordon Campbell, says the province’s conflicting agendas underscore a troubling aspect of the government’s regulation of oil and gas industry operations near critical infrastructure. From the outset, Brown says, the OGC has both promoted and regulated oil and gas industry activities. Limiting where companies drill and frack is simply not part of the OGC’s mandate or culture.

Brown likens the OGC to the National Energy Board. “It has a dual role as a proponent of oil and gas development, but also its regulator. And I think there is a fundamental conflict with that,” Brown says. He adds that “political oversight” of the OGC is also problematic because two Cabinet ministers — Energy and Mines Minister, Bill Bennett, and Minister of Natural Gas Development, Rich Coleman — are effectively there to “promote oil and gas activity.”

Concerns for public health and safety should mean that when tensions between the province’s publicly owned hydro utility and the natural gas industry arise it falls to a neutral ministry to determine what activities will be allowed or disallowed near critically important public infrastructure like dams and reservoirs, Brown said.

“Clearly what you need now is an independent voice in cabinet, the Environment Minister, to make broad determinations in an independent way,” Brown said. “The promoter should not be the regulator of oil and gas activities.”

Fracking-induced Earthquakes Cause Alarm

Documents released in response to the FOI request show that in both Alberta and British Columbia hydro providers have become increasingly alarmed at natural gas company incursions onto lands near their dams. The concerns have escalated as distinct clusters of earthquakes in confined areas over short periods of time have occurred in lockstep with fracking operations.

In one email, Rigbey notes that there are “no regulations to stop” oil and gas companies “from injecting into a pre-existing fault” in the rock. In other words, there is a risk that induced fractures could be forced into geologically unstable areas triggering or setting the stage for earthquakes. While gas companies might not want to tap into such faults, Rigbey noted, “accidents can happen.”

In its public pronouncements, however, BC Hydro has been more muted in its concerns. In a 551-page report filed with the joint federal-provincial panel that reviewed the Site C project for example, BC Hydro devoted less than two pages to discussing “petroleum industry-related” earthquakes and it downplayed their threats.

“The Oil and Gas Commission is now establishing procedures and requirements for monitoring and reporting of induced seismicity,” BC Hydro reported to the panel in January 2013. “Each case of induced seismicity will be evaluated on the basis of its unique site-specific characteristics, but it is proposed that hydraulic fracturing would be suspended upon detection of an earthquake of magnitude M4 or larger. It should be noted that earthquakes less than about magnitude M5 do not release enough energy to cause damage to engineered structures.”

In response to written questions, the Oil and Gas Commission said that as a result of discussions with BC Hydro the province “has established a five kilometre buffer area around the WAC Bennett, Peace Canyon and Site C dams.”

Graham Currie, the OGC’s executive director of corporate affairs, added that the Site C dam location is squarely within the Montney Basin, which contains large quantities of shale gas. Gas from dense shale rock formations can only be coaxed from the earth by extensive use of fracking.

Gail Atkinson, an expert on induced earthquakes and a professor in earth sciences at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), says induced earthquakes can be hazardous because they occur much closer to the earth’s surface than do natural earthquakes. If such events happen near dams or other surface structures, the ensuing shaking can be much worse than would be the case with a naturally occurring earthquake of the same magnitude.

The higher the number of fracking-induced earthquakes near dams, the greater the risk that one of them might be sufficiently strong enough to exceed what the dams are engineered to withstand.

“If the frequency of experiencing earthquakes near a dam increases, then the level of expected ground motions at the 1 per cent in 100 year likelihood level will increase,” Atkinson said. She warns that the risk will be greatest “in areas where the hazard was initially low because there is little natural seismicity.”

Atkinson added that even earthquakes of a “moderate” strength could damage dams or other structures if they are induced “at close distances” to such structures.

Such risks are not something that BC Hydro talks about publicly, however. In an on-line video on dam safety, for example, Rigbey talks about the threats to dams from naturally occurring earthquakes but never once even mentions fracking or the increasing number of tremors associated with it.

Alberta’s TransAlta ‘Concerned’ About Fracking Earthquakes Near Dams

Atkinson’s work has clearly influenced TransAlta’s thinking. The company is one of three organizations that funds Atkinson’s fully endowed research chair on hazards associated with induced earthquakes at UWO. The other two are the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council and Nanometrics, a maker of seismic monitoring equipment. TransAlta also pays for some of its engineers and dam safety officials to be part of an ongoing multi-disciplinary research effort known as the Canadian Induced Seismicity Collaboration or CISC.

The CISC’s website notes that fracking-induced earthquakes are a “pressing problem” in Western Canada and in British Columbia and Alberta particularly. “There is a significant (though very small) possibility that triggered events could be large enough to cause significant damage,” the CISC’s scientists say.

According to Hatcher, TransAlta has secured agreement from natural gas companies operating in Alberta that they will adhere to a special “traffic light” system in a zone between five kilometres and 10 kilometres from its Brazeau dam and the shorelines of the dam’s 13-kilometre-long reservoir. “The traffic light system works in a similar manner to other traffic light systems for hydraulic fracturing, with a Green (proceed)/Yellow (pause and monitor) and Red (stop) protocol,” Hatcher said in written response to questions.

“TransAlta is concerned about the potential impact of fracking induced earthquakes and continues to work with the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), Alberta Environment and the oil and gas operators to ensure that hydrocarbon development occurs in a safe manner that doesn’t create unnecessary risk to existing infrastructure,” Hatcher added.

In the much more sensitive zone immediately beside the dam and reservoir and extending out five kilometres, TransAlta has effectively shut down all fracking operators after filing a number of “statements of concern” with the AER, Alberta’s equivalent of the OGC.

Hatcher said that TransAlta could not release the documents and referred questions to the AER. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has filed a second Freedom of Information request to obtain copies.

Documents released by BC Hydro in response to the first FOI show that BC Hydro was prompted to call for frack-free buffer zones around its dams after learning what TransAlta had achieved in Alberta. BC Hydro’s Peace River dams are not only the biggest power sources in the province’s hydroelectric network (the Bennett dam furnishes one-quarter of the province’s hydroelectric power), but also in the region of the province with the richest natural gas reserves.

Special Consideration Given to Underground Gas Storage Reservoir

Only one other highly sensitive, yet little known, infrastructure project in B.C. is currently the subject of special operating guidelines as far as fracking is concerned.

BC Hydro learned of those guidelines in email correspondence with the OGC.

The infrastructure in question is a massive underground storage reservoir capable of holding 77 billion cubic feet of natural gas. It is near an area called Pink Mountain, where Progress Energy, a subsidiary of Petronas, is actively engaged in building roads, well pads, freshwater and wastewater holdings ponds, compressor stations, pipeline corridors and other infrastructure integral to the gas-drilling and fracking process.

The company also has plans on the books, which the provincial government has exempted from BC Utilities Commission review, to have a privately owned and operated hydro transmission built to the Pink Mountain area from the Peace River’s hydroelectric facilities. The new line would allow Progress to burn less natural gas in compressors by switching to hydroelectricity, thus increasing the profitability of its fracked gas.

The underground gas storage facility consists of two underground storage reservoirs and is about 1,400 metres below the ground. Since the late 1980s, natural gas has typically been pumped into the reservoirs in the summer months when gas demand is low and then pumped out as needed in the fall and winter months.

Fortis Inc. announced that it was purchasing the facility from Chevron in 2015 at a cost of approximately US$266 million.

At the time of its purchase, Fortis noted that the facility could become critical in the event LNG went ahead in the province. “The facility — which is the only underground gas storage facility in B.C. offering storage to third parties — is also uniquely positioned to benefit from the completion of proposed LNG export projects, where it could provide balancing services to suppliers and LNG exporters.”

In an email response to questions, David Bennett, Fortis BC’s director of communications and external relations, said that “successful meetings” were held between the company, the OGC and the provincial Ministry of Natural Gas Development. Those talks resulted in new rules that “ensure current and future drillers and well operators are aware of the facility and operate in such a manner to maintain the integrity of the underground storage reservoirs and ensure that new well production is not taken from the ACGS [Aitken Creek Gas Storage] reservoirs.”

In a follow-up phone conversation, Bennett said that Fortis had no fears that fracking into the reservoir could result in a cataclysmic event such as an explosion. The main concern, he said, is to avoid someone taking gas out of the reservoirs by fracking into them. “We don’t want anyone interfering with the reservoir,” he said, adding Fortis wants Progress Energy and any other companies engaged in fracking “to stay away from the reservoir.”

Documents released through the FOI show that the OGC has “conditions for permits” in place in proximity to the gas reservoirs. The conditions do not include an outright ban on fracking or gas drilling in a buffer area around the reservoirs. On maps supplied by the OGC, the buffer area is irregularly shaped but in most cases extends less than five kilometres out from the reservoirs.

In email correspondence, the OGC said that any company holding a permit to drill and frack for gas near the reservoirs “must not conduct any drilling completions or well operations” that have “a material adverse impact on the integrity or safe operation” of the facilities.

How this is monitored and enforced is not clear.

Natural gas companies operating in the zone are also required to notify Fortis when a well is about to be drilled and fracked. They must also notify the company when they resume drilling following “a temporary suspension” of such operations.

The special permit conditions, which BC Hydro has a copy of, do not specify what would lead to a “temporary suspension.” But earthquakes induced by fracking are among those events that have triggered stoppages in previous fracking operations.

Like the arrangements that have been worked out with BC Hydro, the special operating conditions at Aitken Creek are not common knowledge. Neither the OGC, nor the Ministry of Energy and Mines, nor the Ministry of Natural Gas Development has issued a press release stating that the special permit conditions, such as they are, are in place in the Aitken Creek area.

Much like the silence surrounding buffer zones around B.C.’s biggest hydroelectric dams, the government seems to be of the view that the less said, the better.

– Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – BC Office and author of Fracking Up Our Water, Hydro Power and Climate: BC’s Reckless Pursuit of Shale Gas, a research report published in 2011 that called for frack-free zones.

Image: A sign indicates underground cables at the W.A.C. Bennett Dam. Carol Linnitt/DeSmog Canada

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By Ben Parfitt for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Senior BC Hydro officials have quietly feared for years that earthquakes triggered by natural gas industry fracking operations could damage its Peace River dams, putting hundreds if not thousands of people at risk should the dams fail.

Yet the Crown corporation has said nothing publicly about its concerns, opting instead to negotiate behind the scenes with the provincial energy industry regulator, the BC Oil and Gas Commission (OGC).

To date, those discussions have resulted in only modest “understandings” between the hydro provider and the OGC that would see a halt in the issuance of any new “subsurface rights” allowing companies to drill and frack for natural gas within five kilometres of the Peace River’s two existing dams or an approved third dam on the river, the controversial $9-billion Site C project. Companies already holding such rights, however, would not be subject to the ban.

But once again, none of this is public knowledge. Only after the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives filed a Freedom of Information request with BC Hydro did the Crown corporation disclose its concerns, which focus on the possibility that fracking could trigger earthquakes more powerful than some of its dams are designed to withstand.

Documents released by the Crown corporation under the FOI show that in December 2009 senior officials at BC Hydro became alarmed at oil and gas industry operations on lands near its Peace Canyon Dam. The dam is 23 kilometres downstream from the W.A.C. Bennett Dam, a 49-year-old structure that impounds the world’s seventh-largest hydro reservoir by water volume.

Of concern was an experiment underway to extract methane gas from coal seams in proximity to the Peace River. Coal bed methane extraction had never before been tried in B.C., although it had been done extensively in several U.S. states and in Alberta with sometimes disastrous results, including instances of water so badly contaminated with gas that people could set their household tap water on fire.

To extract such gas, companies drill into relatively shallow coal seams and then pressure-pump immense amounts of water into wellbores in fracking operations. Fracking creates cracks or fractures in the coal seams that allow trapped gas to be released. Typically, companies then “de-saturate” or de-water the sites by pumping water out so the gas can flow.

At the time, Hudson’s Hope Gas, a subsidiary of Canada Energy Partners and GeoMet Inc., had drilled at least eight coal bed methane wells near the community of Hudson’s Hope, which lies about nine kilometres downstream of the Peace Canyon Dam and is home to more than 1,000 people.

The company had plans to drill and frack up to 300 more wells, with at least three of those wells situated close to the Peace Canyon Dam. The plans clearly alarmed BC Hydro’s then chief safety, health and environment officer, Ray Stewart, who called them an “immediate” threat to the region’s hydro facilities.

“The production of coal bed methane from these wells involves hydro-fracturing [fracking] to increase permeability of the coal seams, followed by extraction of groundwater to de-saturate coal seams and allow methane gas to be released,” Stewart noted in a letter to the provincial Ministry of Environment’s Glen Davidson, then British Columbia’s comptroller of water rights.

“BC Hydro believes that there are immediate and future potential risks to BC Hydro’s reservoir, dam and power generation infrastructure as a result of this.”

Stewart went on to warn that the “potential effects” of such actions could be natural gas industry-induced earthquakes that were greater in magnitude “than the original design criteria for the dam.” What risks this posed to people and communities immediately downstream of the dam, he did not say.

Stewart also warned that fracking could “reactivate” ancient faults in the region, which could potentially set the stage for earthquakes. He also warned of unspecified “hydrogeologic impacts” on hydro reservoirs from fracking and the potential for site-specific areas of land to subside or sink as a result of immense amounts of water being pumped out of the earth or in the event that de-watered coal seams somehow ignited.

There are no further such letters from Stewart in the documents supplied by BC Hydro. Part of the reason for that may be that coal bed methane extraction was a short-lived phenomenon in B.C. No company in the Peace region or anywhere else in the province for that matter is currently drilling or fracking for such gas.

However, no sooner had natural gas companies dropped their pursuit of coal bed methane than they turned to another so-called “unconventional” fossil fuel — shale gas. The Montney Basin, which underlies much of the Peace River region, is rich in shale gas. But extracting shale gas, which is tightly bound up in rock formations, requires the use of even greater brute force fracking technology. More water must be pumped at even higher pressure to fracture the rock and extract the trapped gas than is the case with coal bed methane, which is typically found closer to the earth’s surface.

Big Dams & a Big Fracking Problem in BC’s Energy-rich #PeaceRiver Region https://t.co/6JslA7kIPj @christyclarkbc @maryforbc #bcpoli #SiteC

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) August 16, 2016

As fracking for shale gas became more common, senior officials at BC Hydro began to see a pattern. Earthquakes started occurring in lockstep with fracking operations. One of the most pronounced examples occurred in the Farrell Creek fracking zone, near BC Hydro’s Peace River dams. Between July 2010 and March 2013, a dozen earthquakes were recorded in the region, ranging from a low of 1.6 magnitude on the Richter scale to a high of 3.4.

The cluster of earthquakes, all in roughly the same confined region where one company, Talisman Energy, was involved in extensive fracking operations, caught the attention of Scott Gilliss, BC Hydro’s dam safety engineer in the Peace River region.

Gilliss made his concerns known to senior officials at head office. Shortly after that, he received an email from Des Hartford, Hydro’s principal engineering scientist, who reported directly to Stephen Rigbey, the corporation’s director of dam safety.

“Scott,” Hartford’s email began: “As was discussed at the Department Meeting yesterday, this is to confirm that having brought forward your concerns about hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) activities in proximity of dams and reservoirs, you have discharged your responsibilities with respect to reporting and management of this matter. It is now up to Stephen as advised by me to determine what if any action should be taken by Dam Safety with respect to this matter.”

“Fundamentally,” Hartford’s email continued, “hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) is one of these ‘new and emergent’ threats that require examination in the context of scientific and policy considerations in order that any meaningful management actions can be initiated if required.”

Hartford instructed Gilliss to document his concerns so that others at BC Hydro could “take them forward.”

Gilliss did so, pointing out in a subsequent email released by BC Hydro that “oil and gas production may have contributed to a dam breach” at the Baldwin Hill Dam in Los Angeles in 1963.

The Baldwin Hill breach, as described by award-winning investigative reporter and writer Andrew Nikiforuk in his most recent book Slick Water: Fracking and One Insider’s Stand Against the World’s Most Powerful Industry, occurred at a then new dam, and resulted in a “colossal rupture that sent 292 million gallons of water spilling into a residential community, destroying hundreds of homes and killing five people.”

A subsequent review of the catastrophe by Richard Meehan, a leading expert on fluid migration at Stanford University, and Douglas Hamilton, a prominent civil engineer, concluded that “fluid injection” by the oil and gas industry, combined with sinking ground around the dam had led to the structure’s sudden and ultimately deadly failure.

“This is the case study that triggered my concern over hydraulic fracturing in the Peace,” Gilliss wrote in an email to Hartford on March 17, 2013. “The Baldwin hills case appeared to have occurred following very intense [oil and gas industry] exploration and development, the likes of which we don’t have here yet. The geology of their site was also quite complex and riddled with faults. A similarity does exist in that there are two small thrust faults downstream of PCN [the Peace Canyon Dam] which dip beneath the dam. Reactivation of these small faults could be problematic for PCN. There are other north south trending fault[s] in the area.”

Gilliss ended his letter on a note of exasperation.

“In my view, which I have already shared, the province should simply add buffer zones around any very Extreme and Very High Consequence Dams, where hydraulic fracturing cannot be undertaken without a prior full investigation into the risks, and an implemented risk management plan. Why is this so difficult?”

Gilliss’s buffer zone idea was by no means new. Two years earlier, after conducting research for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, I had authored a report calling for “no-go zones” where fracking was prohibited to protect other important resources such as water. By then, there were also de facto bans on fracking in Quebec and New York State.

After writing his email, Gilliss and other top BC Hydro officials had even more reason to think that no-go zones made sense. More and more earthquakes in northeast B.C. were being triggered by fracking, including a magnitude 4.6 tremor that occurred to the north of Fort St. John last year. It was in an area then being actively fracked by Progress Energy, a subsidiary of Malaysian state-owned Petronas. The strength of that induced earthquake was the largest to date anywhere in the world associated with fracking operations.

Petronas is behind a controversial proposal to build a massive Liquefied Natural Gas or LNG terminal at Lelu Island near Prince Rupert. The raw gas for the plant would come almost entirely from northeast B.C., including the Peace River area, and would have to be fracked to be produced. This fact has led some people who oppose the project to refer to it not as an LNG project but an LFG or Liquefied Fracked Gas project.

At least some of that gas would come from lands adjacent to what could one day be a new 83-kilometre-long reservoir impounded by the Site C Dam. Like the upstream Bennett Dam, Site C would be an earth-filled dam.

This image from the BC Hydro documents shows a no-frack zone surrounding the Site C dam on the Peace River.

The Bennett dam, completed in 1967, is now almost exactly halfway through its projected 100-year operating life. At nearly two kilometres across and the height of a 60-storey building, it is one of the largest earth-filled dams in North America. In 1996, it became the subject of intense engineering and safety scrutiny when two sinkholes suddenly opened at the crest of the dam.

In an investigative magazine article written a few years after that discovery, writer Anne Mullens noted that were the dam to fail, it would unleash a torrent of water so powerful that it would wipe out the Peace Canyon dam downstream, sending an “unstoppable burst of water 135 metres high,” down on the residents of Hudson’s Hope and communities much farther downstream.

“Unlike a tsunami, the destruction wouldn’t simply peak and stop,” Mullens wrote in BC Business Magazine. “The pent-up waters of Williston Lake would just keep coming, seeking to return to its natural elevation. The waters would flow for weeks, scouring away communities like Old Fort, Taylor, Peace River, Fort Smith and beyond. The onslaught would back up tributaries and inundate the entire Peace River Basin, flooding Lake Athabasca and Great Slave Lake. The floods could devastate northern Alberta, portions of Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories all the way to the Arctic Ocean. The death toll could be high; the environmental and structural damage astronomical. Combined with the loss of generating power of the dam, the unprecedented disaster would cost billions of dollars and throw B.C.’s economy into turmoil.”

Stephen Rigbey, BC Hydro’s director of dam safety, says that in the aftermath of the discovery and repair of those sinkholes the Bennett dam has become “one of the world’s most studied and instrumented dams.” There are a number of upgrades underway at the dam, including the replacement of “large rocks on the upstream face of the dam that protect the dam from wind and wave action.”

In an interview following the release of the FOI materials, Rigbey said that Gilliss and other dam safety officials operating in the field are paid to worry, but that he himself has no concerns that fracking operations would trigger any catastrophic failure at BC Hydro’s Peace River dams.

Rigbey did say, however, that ground motions from fracking operations could cause slight alterations to “weak bedrock” near the dams and that in turn could change the way that water naturally seeps through earth-filled dams. Ground motions could also potentially knock some electrical control equipment off-line, Rigbey added. In the event that one or both happened, BC Hydro would be faced with high repair and maintenance costs.

“Would it [fracking] bring the dam down? Not a hope. Would it do damage and cost me a lot of money? Absolutely. It would cost me a lot of time and a lot of money and that’s what I don’t want to occur,” Rigbey said.

Rigbey said that for these reasons BC Hydro has sought to exclude fracking from zones nearby the Bennett and Peace Canyon dams and around the construction zone of the Site C dam.

At this point in time, the unwritten “understanding” between the OGC and Hydro is that no new tenures will be awarded to companies allowing them access to natural gas deposits in a zone within five kilometres of the three dam sites. Companies already holding such rights will, however, be allowed to drill and frack for gas. In the event that happens, BC Hydro says it will work with the OGC “to effectively manage any risk.”

“This is a work in progress,” Rigbey said. “We are working toward strengthening the current understanding.”

Graham Currie, the OGC’s executive director of corporate affairs, confirmed in an email response to questions that five-kilometre buffers are in place around the two existing dams and the proposed Site C dam. He said that the buffer zone around Site C will “prevent the sale of oil and gas rights within the buffer area.”

Currie added that the proposed Site C dam falls within the Montney shale gas zone, one of the most actively drilled and fracked zones in the province.

“Site C falls within the Montney play and will be built to a high seismic safety standard,” Currie said in an email response to questions filed with the OGC. “During construction, permit conditions on a [natural gas] well in the Montney may be used to control the timing of hydraulic fracturing operations. All wells in the Montney are double-lined with cement and steel to a depth of 600 meters for further protection.”

The email fails to mention that such protective measures do not prevent fracking-induced earthquakes. Cement casings, which are often imperfectly poured and prone to fail, are intended to prevent groundwater from being contaminated — an entirely different issue.

The “understanding” between Hydro and the OGC does not extend to the lands around the reservoirs themselves, Currie said. That includes lands around what could one day be the Site C reservoir; lands that according to a document prepared for BC Hydro could experience as many as 4,000 landslides during and after the reservoir fills. Whether or not fracking could further destabilize those lands damaging the reservoir and dam itself remains unknown.

What is known, however, is that earthquakes induced by fracking behave entirely differently than do naturally-occurring earthquakes.

Gail Atkinson is a professor in Earth Sciences, a leading expert on the effects of induced earthquakes, and holds the Industrial Chair in Hazards from Induced Seismicity at the University of Western Ontario. The chair is funded, in part, by TransAlta, a privately owned hydro provider in Alberta.

In response to written questions, Atkinson said most people would agree with the proposition that “precluding oil and gas activity such as fracking…within some radius of dams and reservoirs would prevent the possibility of induced seismicity that could damage such facilities.”

Atkinson said the big concern with earthquakes triggered by events such as fracking is that they occur much closer to the earth’s surface than do natural earthquakes. A fracking-induced tremor might be as close to the surface as two kilometres, while a natural earthquake might occur 10 kilometres down. The shaking caused by a fracking-induced earthquake may be of only short duration, but it is a stronger and different kind of shaking. The potentially “strong ground motions” generated by such shaking occur “closer to infrastructure on the surface.”

“The concern is that the potential for induced earthquakes to generate strong motions makes it difficult to satisfy the high safety requirements for critical infrastructure, if earthquakes can be induced by operations in very close proximity [to dams and reservoirs],” Atkinson said.

While there is presently “no consensus” over what constitutes a reasonable size for no-frack zones, buffer zones do make sense, Atkinson said. “A zone of monitoring beyond the buffer zone is also a good precautionary measure in my view, as it would allow low-level induced seismicity from disposal or fracking beyond the buffer to be detected quickly and any necessary measures to be taken. Enhanced monitoring would also provide valuable research data to improve our understanding of the issue.”

In a telephone interview, Rigbey said he agreed with Atkinson’s thinking that both firm no-fracking buffer zones and special management zones beyond that made sense.

Atkinson’s thinking is in keeping with ongoing efforts by TransAlta to protect some of its hydro facilities in Alberta from natural gas industry fracking operations. Those efforts appear to have effectively shut down fracking in a buffer zone around one of TransAlta’s dams and the dam’s reservoir as well. Special operating guidelines are also in place beyond the buffer zones that can force companies to cease fracking.

But, as is the case in B.C., negotiations between TransAlta and Alberta’s energy industry regulator have happened behind closed doors.

Members of the public who are at direct risk should a catastrophic dam failure occur are kept in the dark when it comes to negotiations that could have a direct impact on their lives.

Tomorrow: Alberta’s advances and questions about why B.C. may be lagging behind.

Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – BC Office and author of Fracking Up Our Water, Hydro Power and Climate: BC’s Reckless Pursuit of Shale Gas, a research report published in 2011 that called for frack-free zones.

BC Hydro Fracking Radius Images Select FOI

BC Hydro Fracking Radius Select FOI Materials

Image: Fracking operations in Northeast B.C. Photo: Damien Gillis/Commonsense Canadian

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The results of a new study linking hydraulic fracturing or fracking to induced earthquakes in B.C. and Alberta is reason to immediately halt the controversial extraction technique from being used in gas fields in B.C. according to Andrew Weaver, leader of the B.C. Green Party and MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head.   “I am calling on both the government and the official opposition to join me in supporting a moratorium on horizontal fracking in British Columbia,” Weaver said in a statement released Tuesday. “Other jurisdictions, like Quebec, New York, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, have already suspended the practice and B.C. should follow suit.”   The study found a direct link between fracking and earthquakes in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin over the last 25 years. The group studied more than 12,000 wells and seismic events larger than magnitude 3.0.   The new research, published in Seismological Research Letters on Tuesday by a group of Canadian researchers, concludes that 90 per cent of seismic activity in the region was the direct result of fracking operations.

Due to the massive amount of fracking sites in operation, this amounts to under one per cent of wells triggering earthquakes. 

While researchers acknowledge the figure is small, “it is important for us to realize that indeed hydraulic fracturing can induce earthquakes," Honn Kao, a research scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada and one of 13 co-authors of a study, told the CBC.   "But the evidence so far indicates there are other factors that may be important in this process as well, so that we cannot blame all the hydraulic fracturing operations for inducing big earthquakes," he said.   Previous research has determined a relationship between earthquakes and wastewater injection sites used to dispose of the sometimes millions of gallons of contaminated water produced at frack sites. But this is the first study to identify a definitive link between the process of fracking itself and induced seismic activity.   An earthquake measuring between 4.2 and 4.8 on the Richter scale rocked the town of Fox Creek, Alberta, in January of this year, raising concerns that increased seismic activity in the region is due to local fracking operations. The quake resulted in the closure of a fracking operation.   "It's critical that we get to a complete scientific understanding of the issue," David Eaton, a University of Calgary geophysicist and a co-author of the study, told the CBC.   Fracking, a high-pressure drilling process, poses a significant threat to underground sources of drinking water, which are inadequately mapped in Canada.   In a high-profile case currently before the Supreme Court of Canada, Alberta landowner Jessia Ernst is arguing fracking contaminated her water supply eight years ago and that poor regulation surrounding the process left her without adequate protection.     According to Weaver, these kinds of situations should not be occurring.   “I am calling for a moratorium on horizontal fracturing in B.C. until we establish scientific certainty on the risks it poses,” he said.   “Earthquakes, groundwater contamination, fresh water use, sour gas leaks, environmental degradation and terrain modification, are all concerning side effects of fracking and they warrant comprehensive and cumulative scientific review.”    There are significant fracking operations in northeastern B.C. and a recent study by the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission found that between August 2013 and October 2014 fracking operations triggered 231 earthquakes.   The report noted 38 earthquakes were caused by wastewater injection and 193 seismic events were the result of fracking operations in the area.   The B.C. government, which is intent on building an liquefied natural gas (LNG) export industry in B.C., has thrown its support behind the province’s growing gas industry.   There are hundreds of new wells drilled every year in B.C., Weaver cautioned.

“Now we have the scientific evidence showing a clear link between fracking and earthquakes, but we really have no idea what the risks of this increased seismic activity amount to. We are flying blind,” Weaver said.   “The BC Green Party has consistently called for a moratorium on fracking in our province,” he said. “To continue to allow horizontal fracking in B.C. is irresponsible in light of mounting evidence.”

Image: Province of B.C. via Flickr

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A groundbreaking study published today in Seismological Research Letters has demonstrated a link, for the first time, between hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") for oil and gas and earthquakes. 

"Hydraulic Fracturing and Seismicity in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin" confirms the horizontal drilling technique (which in essence creates an underground mini-earthquake to open up fissures for oil and gas extraction) is responsible for earthquakes, above and beyond what is already canonized in the scientific literature. We already knew that injecting fracking waste into underground wells can cause quakes. But now it's not just the injections wells, but the fracking procedure itself that can be linked to seismicity. 

The study focuses on an area in Canada known as the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB), one of Canada's biggest shale basins and tight oil and gas producing regions.

The researchers "compared the relationship of 12,289 fracking wells and 1,236 wastewater disposal wells to magnitude 3 or larger earthquakes in an area of 454,000 square kilometers near the border between Alberta and British Columbia, between 1985 and 2015," explained a press release. They "found 39 hydraulic fracturing wells (0.3% of the total of fracking wells studied), and 17 wastewater disposal wells (1% of the disposal wells studied) that could be linked to earthquakes of magnitude 3 or larger."

If that sounds like a fairly small percentage, Atkinson and colleagues readily admit that is the case in the study. Yet they also write that it could portend worse things to come as more and more wells are fracked in the region.

"It is important to acknowledge that associated seismicity occurs for only a small proportion of hydraulic fracturing operations," they wrote, proceeding to cite another paper written in 2015 by lead author Gail Atkinson — a professor of earth sciences at the University of Western Ontario —  and colleagues on the impacts of induced seismicity. "However, considering that thousands of such wells are drilled every year in the WCSB, the implications for hazard are nevertheless significant, particularly if multiple operations are located in close proximity to critical infrastructure."

The Western Canada Sedimentary Basin uses less water during fracking operations than in places like the current mecca of frackquakes, Oklahoma. In the paper, the authors also conclude that the massive amount of wastewater incidents in the U.S. may cloak the impact fracking has had on induced seismicity in the central U.S., which calls for more scientific investigation.

"[I]t is possible that a higher-than-recognized fraction of induced earthquakes in the United States are linked to hydraulic fracturing, but their identification may be masked by more abundant wastewater-induced events," they explained.

One of their most important finds appears to be the definitive link the researchers found between fracking and earthquakes in the region, rather than the sheer number of quakes. They also found no link between the amount of fluid pumped into the ground during fracking and the size of the earthquake.

"More than 60% of these quakes are linked to hydraulic fracture, about 30-35% come from disposal wells, and only 5 to 10% of the earthquakes have a natural tectonic origin," said Atkinson in a press release. And "if there isn't any relationship between the maximum magnitude and the fluid disposal, then potentially one could trigger larger events if the fluid pressures find their way to a suitably stressed fault."

What's the big takeaway, then, according to the paper? Of course, a call for more investigation, but in the meantime they also call for more thoughtful public policy moving forward.

"The nature of the hazard from hydraulic fracturing has received less attention than that from wastewater disposal, but it is clearly of both regional and global importance," they wrote in the conclusion. "The likelihood of damaging earthquakes and their potential consequences needs to be carefully assessed when planning HF operations in this area."

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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This is a guest post by Ben Parfitt, resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It orginially appeared on policynote.ca.

Well, I won’t back down No, I won’t back down You can stand me up at the gates of hell But I won’t back down

— Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty

In the mid 1960s, the world’s two superpowers hit on a novel idea to try to coax more oil and natural gas from the ground. In what they hoped would prompt the release of “endless fountains of fossil fuels,” first the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and then the United States of America detonated nuclear bombs belowground.

The hoped-for geysers of fuel never materialized. Instead, nearby oil and gas wells became contaminated with radioactive gases that in some cases later broke to the surface and swept over the homes of unsuspecting residents. Groundwater was polluted. And giant subterranean craters filled with cancer-inducing gases that no public power utility in its right mind would touch.

The failed experiments of a half-century ago were not, however, a surprise to those who were familiar with mining the earth’s depths for oil and natural gas. If anything, the nuclear detonations were simply part of a continuum that traced back to the mid 1860s in Pennsylvania. Flummoxed by the rapid decline in production from the world’s first intensively drilled oil field, wildcatters embraced the ideas of a Civil War veteran who sent torpedoes underground to stimulate oil flows.

The new technology, the magazine Scientific American enthused, “would fracture the rock, and clear the closed passages or make artificial ones reaching the oil veins.”

Many people would subsequently be blown to bits during well-torpedoing events and later with the use of nitroglycerin as a brute-force mining technology. But more oil flowed, and the era of hydraulic fracturing or fracking was born.

For Andrew Nikiforuk, the brutal antecedents to today’s fracking operations are critical to understanding what is going on now. Contemporary fracking involves pumping massive amounts of water, cancer-causing chemicals, fine-grained sands or artificial “proppants” belowground to fracture gas-bearing rock or coal formations. But the objective is no different than it was back when the industry and government played with nuclear bombs. Brute force is harnessed to fracture rock in an effort to make it let go of the oil and gas it stubbornly holds. And no amount of computer modeling has yet to make sense of how far those cracks or fractures will go or in what direction. “Chaos” reigns. And human life, human health, water, the environment, our climate be damned.

Slick Water: Fracking and One Insider’s Stand Against the World’s Most Powerful Industry, captures like never before how fossil fuel companies must do more and more to coax oil and gas from the ground. And how that each time more effort is made, the social and environmental costs mount. The publication of Nikiforuk’s most recent book could not be more fortuitous, as the B.C. government continues to woo energy industry giants to build liquefied natural gas plants on the province’s coastline: processing facilities that would link via new pipelines to the northeast interior of the province where B.C.’s largest natural gas deposits are located. The book should be required reading for every MLA.

Given the tricky geology where some of B.C.’s natural gas is found, unprecedented volumes of water would be required to “stimulate” gas production. To date, those stimulations or fracks in the northeast of the province have caused lake levels to drop dangerously low, triggered clusters of earthquakes, and led to “failures” or leaks at sites where highly toxic wastewater from fracking operations was allegedly safely stored. All of this and more occurred when drilling and fracking activities were a tiny fraction of what they would be were just one LNG facility to be built.

No one who has paid even modest attention to the controversies associated with fracking will have escaped noticing the many ways in which governments and oil and gas companies defend modern-day extraction techniques:

We drill and frack at such great depths that there’s no possibility of contaminating drinking water.

We pour cement around our wellbores to protect groundwater from gas leaks.

Household water that can be lit on fire and water wells that are filled with methane gas has nothing to do with us. Mother Nature is responsible.

In each case, Nikiforuk debunks such assertions with a wealth of data that will leave readers shaking their heads and questioning how, if at all, fracking operations can be conducted safely. But it is the human story — that of Jessica Ernst, a one-time energy industry consultant whose well water became heavily contaminated after Encana conducted numerous fracking operations in the aquifer that supplied her and other residents in and around Rosebud, Alberta, with their water — that is the most compelling, heart-breaking and anger-inducing.

And not just because of the shoddy, dismissive attitude that the energy company had when it came to what impacts its operations might have on peace and quiet and on water quality. More troubling by far is the almost complete lack of meaningful action, incompetence and acts of overt hostility and intimidation visited on Ernst by members of the Energy and Utilities Board (EUB), Alberta’s then energy industry regulator, provincial environmental officials, and the RCMP.

From the moment that the energy company began experimenting with extracting gas from shallow, thin coal seams in and around Rosebud in the early years of the last decade, Ernst was in constant touch with the company and provincial agencies. First about the horrendous noise associated with compressors that the company had installed near her home to push gas to the surface. (Imagine a jet engine roaring constantly not far from your backyard fence.) And then, about her water. Water that came from a well that had been given a clean bill of health with no gas present before the frackers arrived, and that after the frackers left was so contaminated with methane that the water pouring from Ernst’s taps and showerhead could be lit on fire.

But if the company and regulators thought that Ernst would roll over like so many had before her, they were wrong, although precedent was clearly on their side.

Over and over again, landowners who got angry enough and rattled the cages of the fracking companies long and hard enough eventually got a cheque. The cheque covered the cost of their house and land if they were lucky, and they moved on. But there was always a catch. Landowners had to first sign papers that amounted to gag orders. They got the money in exchange for their silence. The silence even extended in some cases to the written record itself. If a landowner had filed a claim against a company in court, the court records were sometimes sealed under a “protective order.”

It was clear whose interests were thus protected. But Ernst wasn’t — and to this day still isn’t — rolling over. Instead, three years after Encana encroached on the unsuspecting citizens of Rosebud and began what amounted to a giant experiment to frack and extract methane gas from shallow coal seams, Ernst sued Encana, the EUB and Alberta Environment.

“Gag orders erased history, Ernst realized, and allowed regulators to claim there had been no proof of contamination in the first place. To her way of thinking, the courts were participating in ‘criminal activity’ by allowing the gag orders. She had compassion for families who signed to protect the health of their children but only contempt for the authorities that willfully covered up industry’s dangerous methane liabilities.”

Eleven years after Ernst’s problems first began and nearly eight years after lawyers filed her lawsuit, Ernst is still awaiting justice. The slug-like pace of the legal proceedings coupled with the drying up of all opportunities for her to work in the oil patch means that Ernst is draining her life’s savings in the fight. But she is not backing down. Blessed with an encyclopedic memory and a willingness to go to the wall to extract information from a government that holds onto it about as stubbornly as a shale rock formation holds onto its trapped gas, Ernst has armed her lawyers with a wealth of information that may one day set a precedent that tens of thousands of other landowners living in harm’s way will thank her for. She has also become a folk heroine in the process, speaking on the dangers of fracking to audiences in Ireland, England, the United States and Canada.

Fourteen years ago, Nikiforuk wrote Saboteurs. Subtitled Wiebo Ludwig’s War Against Big Oil, the book recounted the horrors visited upon numerous rural landowners by encroaching natural gas operations, and in particular the toxic legacy of “sour” gas. Sour gas contains hydrogen sulphide, a neurotoxin that can be lethal at high enough concentrations and that has killed scores of workers in the oil patch. Farmers and ranches living in proximity to gas flares or gas lines, wells and other infrastructure that may leak such gas, frequently report that their cattle spontaneously abort. And then there are the miscarriages that have happened in farmers’ and ranchers’ homes . . .

Saboteurs went on to win a Governor General’s Award for non-fiction. In its first hardcover incarnation it featured a cover that looked like a stand-in for a still from a Quentin Tarantino film: a low-angle shot, of a thickly bearded Wiebo Ludwig, clutching a rifle. A light shines on Ludwig’s face, warming it and setting it off from the ominous gray sky behind him. He stares directly and somewhat impassively down into the camera. Behind him, a sign emblazoned in red and black block letters warns of the dangers to the local community of gas wells and orders the gas industry to abandon further operations.

Ludwig was eventually found guilty of sabotaging a string of oil and gas wells and infrastructure in northern Alberta. As the dispute between him and the industry intensified prompting one of the most expensive and bizarre police investigations in Alberta history, one company and one man in particular would become Ludwig’s primary adversary. That man was Gwyn Morgan, then president of Alberta Energy Company, which later merged with PanCanadian Energy Corporation to become Encana, a company that Morgan would go on to head and that would move aggressively into mining numerous “unconventional” gas reservoirs. Including, of course, those in and around Rosebud.

Ludwig was eventually stopped. Although another raft of sabotaging activity would subsequently occur in northern B.C., showing that for some “The Weibo Way” was the only way to deal with gas-drilling operations encroaching on their lands. The Weibo Way also factors into the Ernst story but in ways that one would not expect and that will leave readers shaking their heads at the levels to which vested interests will stoop to discredit those who seek justice.

Fourteen years into her battle with Encana and the Alberta government, Ernst is still very much on her own lonely path, continuing to remain strong in the face of government and industry adversity. She shows no signs of stopping. And there isn’t a shotgun in sight.

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Early scientific analysis predicted that the risks associated with hazardous waste injection wells would be negligible. Unfortunately, experience has indicated that disposing of hazardous waste deep underground has been linked to water contamination, destroyed ecosystems, toxic leaks and earthquakes.

Now we are learning that there is a difference between scientific analysis and scientific evidence.

In a recent extensive report by ProPublica, John Apps, leading geoscientist, who advises the Department of Energy for Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, said that the science used to go forward with disposal wells was not sound.

"Every statement is based on a collection of experts that offer you their opinions. Then you do a scientific analysis of their opinions and get some probability out of it. This is a wonderful way to go when you don't have any evidence one way or another… But it really doesn't mean anything scientifically."

Perhaps the scientific projections behind the disposal well operations would be sound under ideal conditions: uniform rock structure, stability of toxic materials, predictable reactions and seismic activity. But, scientists say, no amount of speculation can take into account all of the variables of deep underground environments.

"Geology," according to geologist Ronald Reese, "is never what you think it is.”

Only practical data and experimental research can offer any insight into the possible risks of hazardous waste injection wells. And since many disposal wells have gone unmonitored for years, regulators are unable to make informed decisions about their safety.

According to ProPublica, the EPA “has not counted the number of cases of waste migration or contamination in more than 20 years.”

Up until the 1960’s most toxic waste was deposited in lakes and rivers, which led to obvious, unbearable pollution of eco-systems and drinking water in the United States. As an answer to this pressing problem, oil companies developed hazardous waste injection wells as a solution.

Disposal wells use high-pressure pumps to force toxic and non-toxic waste down cement and steel pipelines to dumping zones about two kilometers deep in the earth. Wells can be shallower if the waste is less offensive. The waste is then released into the porous rock beneath several layers of earth. 

The idea, according to a recent report in the Scientific American, is that “underground waste is contained by layer after layer of impermeable rock. If one layer leaks, the next blocks the waste from spreading before it reaches groundwater. The laws of physics and fluid dynamics should ensure that the waste can't spread far and is diluted as it goes.”

Each disposal well could deposit more than millions of gallons of waste into the ground using tremendous force. Once the waste is deposited, it is not tracked and scientists have no real idea of how far it can travel. The ProPublica report points out that, “rock layers aren't always neatly stacked as they appear in engineers' sketches. They often fold and twist over on themselves. Waste injected into such formations is more likely to spread in lopsided, unpredictable ways.”

In light of recent research and evidence of leakage, hydrologist Tom Myers says that more knowledge is needed to understand the implications of deep disposal wells as “natural faults and fractures are more prevalent than commonly understood.”

Scientific projections were unable to foresee the ways that injection wells would impact the environment. The three major ways are:

Water

In many cases, liquid waste has traveled horizontally and migrated up to ground water through abandoned water and oil wells. This unanticipated phenomenon has been linked to hundreds of water contamination cases throughout the United States and Canada. 

There are currently thousands of unplugged and abandoned wells in the United States and Canada. In 1989, the United States General Accounting Office (GAO) investigated and concluded that current safeguards aren’t preventing contamination from injected oil and gas wastes. Their report states specifically that “brines from Class II wells can enter drinking water supplies directly, through cracks and leaks in the well casing, or indirectly through nearby wells.”

Canada too has had its share of disposal well-related contamination due to insufficient research. The Canadian government blames events like the contamination of groundwater in Lambton Count, Ontario, in 1977 on a “lack of knowledge.” According to Environment Canada, “[d]isposal wells were constructed and waste injected following the regulations and best knowledge at the time. However, it was not realized that waste fluids would migrate to the surface through abandoned oil and groundwater wells, causing a major problem that still exists today.”

Earthquakes

Even basic regulations are supposed to include a seismic survey within a two-mile radius of the designated drilling area. Yet, “in 1961, a 12,000-foot well was drilled at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, northeast of Denver, for disposing of waste fluids from the Arsenal's chemical weapons operations. Injection commenced March 1962, and an unusual series of earthquakes erupted in the area shortly after.” According to the USGS, over the course of time that the Rocky Mountain Arsenal waste dumping practice went on, the area sustained a dozen earthquakes.

The earthquakes were prompted by the destabilization of a seismic fault line due to the drilling of the well and the pressure of materials being forced into the ground. The Arsenal stopped injection operations November 26, 1967 after a 5.0 magnitude earthquake rocked the area a few months earlier.

This isn’t an isolated case.

In 2011, A magnitude 5.7 earthquake rocked the area surrounding Prague, Oklahoma. Scientists say the "largest earthquake in Oklahoma history was likely triggered by a waste injection well." According to a report in National Geographic, "[a]s pressure builds in these disposal wells, it pushes up against geological faults, sometimes causing them to rupture, setting off an earthquake."

In a report released by the scientific journal Geology earlier this year, "Significant earthquakes are increasingly occurring within the continental interior of the United States." These quakes are being directly linked with injection well operations.

Land Value

In Texas many farmers are unable to use their land for farming or livestock due to contamination. Texas is riddled with abandoned and unplugged oil wells, which play a role in the leaks caused by injection wells.

The abandoned wells present a pathway for injected wastes to migrate upward into ground water and onto farmland. If a field is flooded by an injection well leak, the land is not suitable for farming of any kind. The resale value of the land is also affected.

As ProPublica reports, in 2003, "Ed Cowley of the EPA got a call to check out a pool of briny water in a bucolic farm field outside Chico, Texas. Nearby, he said, a stand of trees had begun to wither, their leaves turning crispy brown and falling to the ground." 

The pool of water was due to a salt-water leak from a nearby injection well. Salt-water brine is used in various oil production techniques and is known to contain dangerous chemicals like benzene. "It was frustrating," Crowley said. "If your water goes, what does that do to the value of your land?"

A major contributor to the deficit of knowledge surrounding waste injection wells could be the lack of sufficient monitoring and documentation. And this negligence doesn't appear to be accidental. In the 1980’s, an abundance of leak and water contamination reports brought waste injection well regulations into consideration with federal regulators proposing stricter rules. At the time the oil and gas industry complained they couldn’t afford to uphold such high standards of inspection. The amount of money needed to conduct the inspections would force them to close down they said.

Oil and gas exploration and production waste is now exempt from federal hazardous wastes regulations in the US. 

According to ProPublica, “[o]perators are required to do so-called 'mechanical integrity' tests at regular intervals, yearly for Class 1 wells and at least once every five years for Class 2 wells. In 2010, the tests led to more than 7,500 violations [in the US], with more than 2,300 wells failing. In Texas, one violation was issued for every three Class 2 wells examined in 2010.”

In some cases, operators aren't required to comply with what regulations do exist. Many operational wells were built before current regulations were put into place. These “grandfathered” wells are not, and will not be, subject to the same regulations as new wells.

Even with new wells, the standards are not being met. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, new permits are being issued “without evidence that the pressure tests were conducted.”

Inspection regulations in place are habitually ignored or sidestepped. Perhaps because regulations are, according to some experts, “outdated at this point.”

*images courtesy of Wiki

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