The B.C. government has quietly released its response to an independent scientific panel’s report on hydraulic fracturing as it ushers in a fracking boom to supply the LNG Canada project with unconventional gas.

Notably absent from the government’s news release — posted on its website Thursday but strangely not sent out to media — is any commitment to investigate the human health impacts of fracking in the province’s northeast.

The issue was flagged by Dawson Creek doctors as a potential cause for concern after they saw patients with symptoms they could not explain, including nosebleeds, respiratory illnesses and rare cancers, as well as a surprising number of glioblastomas, a malignant brain cancer.

The independent scientific review did not include an examination of the public health implications of fracking, in keeping with the government’s quiet assurance to the industry lobby group Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers that the hot button issue would not be included in the panel’s mandate.

Even so, the panel found that fracking entails numerous unknown risks to human health and the environment.

Panel members cautioned the severity of those risks is unknown due to a lack of data, noting they were not aware of any health-related studies being conducted in northeast B.C., which is already covered with thousands of fracking wells, including in the middle of communities and on farmland.

‘Highly toxic compounds’

B.C. Green Party environment critic Sonia Furstenau pointed out that other jurisdictions around the world have identified human health impacts as a reason for banning fracking.

“We know that the mix of chemicals being used and being pumped into the ground include highly toxic compounds and we should absolutely be determining what any impacts are to human health,” Furstenau told The Narwhal.

“There’s no way these kinds of things should be proceeding without that information.”

The government’s decision to proceed with fracking and liquefied natural gas development is “deeply troubling,” Furstenau said.

B.C. Green Party environment critic Sonia Furstenau.

The fracked gas will be shipped through TransCanada’s new Coastal GasLink pipeline to Kitimat, where it will be cooled in massive compressors to minus 162 degrees Celsius, the point at which gas turns into liquid and becomes easier to transport in ocean tankers. LNG Canada will burn its own natural gas for the energy-intensive compression process, resulting in substantial greenhouse gas pollution.

The LNG Canada project will emit 3.45 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually, according to the provincial government, which promised the cleanest LNG in the world even though claims of “clean LNG” have been thoroughly debunked.

The project’s emissions will represent more than one-quarter of B.C.’s legislated targets for carbon pollution in 2050, set at about 13 megatonnes a year.

“This should alarm all British Columbians,” Furstenau said, pointing out that climate change is already causing drought and forest fires across the province, including in the northeast.

On June 18, the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission ordered cutbacks to water diversions at northeast oil and gas operations due to drought. That follows a statement to the expert panel from a commission representative that the past 10 years in the northeast have been drier than usual, at a time that fracking operations are using substantial amounts of water.

“The government doesn’t seem to want to address the fundamental problem at the centre of this,” Furstenau said.

“They’ve not only approved but massively subsidized an LNG industry that will require a massive increase to fracking in northeast B.C. — and a massive increase to the amount of water that would go into those fracking operations.”

“You cannot make sense of what the evidence and the data is showing and the response and decisions from government. It’s like they are operating in entirely different universes.”

Furstenau said the government “continues to try to justify a project that will increase emissions, as well as risk contaminating community drinking water, and endangering human health.”

The expert scientific panel found that baseline data and the ongoing monitoring of surface water and groundwater quantity in the northeast was insufficient.

“In the view of the B.C. ministry of health expert who presented to the panel, current water quality sampling (i.e. the private wells study) is not being carried out to screen for potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing fluids and wastewater on drinking water,” the panel concluded.

Close to 100 unauthorized dams used to impound water for fracking operations have been identified in B.C. All have been built on private lands within the Agricultural Land Reserve. This photo shows a dam near the Pine River in Farmington, B.C. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

Expert panel flagged leaking fracking ponds as cause for concern

The panel also found a “profound absence of knowledge” about the presence and migration of fracking fluids — a proprietary mix of chemicals — below the ground.

Dissolved arsenic was found to be the main health-based constituent of concern, with about 30 per cent of samples exceeding the maximum allowable concentration guideline. The panel noted that higher arsenic levels could potentially occur in unfiltered groundwater.

The panel also categorized the potential for leaks from fracking containment ponds as “moderate to high,” based on the fact that two of four decommissioned ponds were found to have leaked.

Following the panel’s report, The Narwhal revealed that a large fracking pond nearly 400 kilometres north of Fort St. John is leaking. The pond is filled with 113,000 cubic metres of sludge and water that may be contaminating soil and groundwater through a leak in its outer lining, according to the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission.

The pond was owned by Ranch Energy Corporation, a Calgary-based company that went into receivership last year leaving 700 gas wells in B.C. and a sea of debt. Ranch was one of three fracking companies operating in B.C. that went belly-up last year, with taxpayers ultimately on the hook for clean-up costs that far exceed an oil and gas commission fund.

About 60 per cent of the gas for the LNG facility will come from new fracking in B.C.’s northeast —  a boreal region rich in biodiversity that is home to endangered woodland caribou and many other species vulnerable to extinction.

B.C. government says it will map aquifers and observe groundwater

In its uncirculated news release, the B.C. government says it will install new groundwater observation wells near Fort Nelson, complete mapping of 55 aquifers and install hydrometric monitoring systems to gather information about surface water in collaboration with First Nations.

The government also says it will implement an outreach and education initiative for affected landowners and fracking dam owners in the northeast and map zones “that are likely to experience greater ground motion from seismic events.”

Furstenau noted the expert panel’s report warned of serious regulatory infractions, water contamination and a lack of information, oversight and monitoring, all of which “make it nearly impossible to evaluate the current state of our water and air quality.”

“It’s too risky,” she said.

The government news release said a working group has been established to address the panel’s 97 recommendations.

Working group members include staff from the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission, the ministry of energy, mines and petroleum resources, the ministry of environment and climate change strategy and the ministry of forests, lands, natural resource operations and rural development.

The working group will provide Energy Minister Michelle Mungall with an update by the end of this year.

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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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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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The electricity created by the controversial Site C dam — long touted for producing enough electricity for 450,000 homes — could end up powering natural gas fracking operations in northeast B.C.

The Prince George Citizen reported on Wednesday that for the first time BC Hydro is considering Site C as a power source for its proposed Peace Region Electrical Supply project, a major transmission line project in northeast B.C.

If the Site C dam gets built (it’s currently facing several legal challenges) and BC Hydro moves forward with the proposed route for the transmission line, natural gas drillers between Dawson Creek and Chetwynd could plug directly into the grid.

The Citizen reports that Hydro expects the transmission project won’t be in service until 2022, making Site C — set for completion in 2025 — a viable option.

The subject of what Site C’s power is required for has spurred intense debate. Some have argued that the dam is needed to power B.C.’s proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants. However, a DeSmog Canada investigation last year indicated that was unlikely to be the case due to timing and transmission constraints.

This week’s news, however, indicates Site C’s power could be used to produce the gas the province plans to export via LNG plants.

"It’d always been in the back of the mind that Site C was possible, but until it got approved it wasn't something we were looking into in a great amount of detail," BC Hydro spokesperson Lesley Wood told the Prince George Citizen.

With a price tag of $8.8 billion, the Site C dam is the most expensive public project in B.C. history. Because it's being proposed by a crown corporation, the costs will ultimately be borne by taxpayers and BC Hydro customers. If built, the dam will flood an 83-kilometre stretch of the fertile Peace Valley.

Work has already started to upgrade power lines in the Groundbirch area east of Dawson Creek, where the province has been experiencing the "most dramatic single-industry driven regional load growth BC Hydro has ever seen," Wood told the Citizen.

The natural gas is located in the Montney Play region, which contains unconventional tight gas and shale gas. The gas is accessed through a process called hydraulic fracturing — or “fracking” — which involves blasting a mixture of water and chemicals underground to fracture the rock formation and release the gas.

A fracking study released last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found fracking puts drinking water supplies at risk of contamination. Further, exporting LNG will not help combat climate change, according to a report from the Pembina Institute last year. A report in Nature last year also found cheap abundant natural gas will delay efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Site C is facing growing opposition, despite BC Hydro hoping to start construction in July.

In May, a U.S. energy economist said the power from the dam is dramatically more costly than previously thought.

Earlier this year, the chair of the joint review panel that reviewed the Site C dam told DeSmog Canada that the province should have waited on making a decision to go ahead with the project. Chair Harry Swain also called the province’s failure to investigate alternatives a “dereliction of duty.”

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The Council of Canadians called on the federal government Tuesday to implement regulation of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in Canada. The process, widely used for unconventional oil and gas recovery in western Canada, is linked to numerous human and environmental health threats and currently faces bans or moratoria in Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, as well as Newfoundland and Labrador. 

“The next Oka in Canadian history is going to be in B.C. and it’s going to be about energy,” indigenous lawyer Caleb Behn said during a press conference in Ottawa addressing the fracking boom in northern British Columbia and other parts of western Canada. 

“I guarantee it. The writing is on the wall. It is just a question of when in my view. That is why the regulators need to step up.”

Behn, who is Eh Cho Dene and Dunne-Za from Treaty 8 Territory in northeastern B.C., and Dr. Kathleen Nolan, co-founder of Concerned Health Professionals of New York, joined the Council of Canadians today in calling on the federal government to safeguard Canadians and their drinking water from the controversial method of releasing natural gas and oil trapped in rock-like shale.

“We need a national water policy that addresses threats to water such as fracking,” Emma Lui, water campaigner with the Council of Canadians, told the press conference this morning at Parliament’s Centre Block.

“With the upcoming federal election, the Council of Canadians hopes to see real federal leadership and commitments to protect our communities, health, water and our water sources from fracking,” she said.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves drilling underground wells 200 to 3,000 metres vertically and another 1,000 metres or more horizontally to penetrate the rock-like shale. Pressurized water mixed with hundreds of toxic substances (including benzene, hydrochloric acid, mercury and formaldehyde) is shot down the well to penetrate the rock and force natural gas or oil to the surface.

A single fracked well consumes anywhere between seven to 23 million litres of water. Poorly constructed or cracked concrete wells have led to the contamination of groundwater with fracking chemicals or methane, a main component of natural gas.

“There are roughly 200 chemicals used in fracking that we know about that have not been assessed by Health Canada or Environment Canada,” Lui explained.

“There is a rapidly emerging body of evidence that shows harms from this activity (fracking) at every stage of the process. With contamination of air, water and social,” Dr. Nolan said.

“People are getting sick.”

Headaches, disorientation, rashes, seizures and asthma are some of the immediate health impacts airborne contaminants from fracking operations can have on people living nearby, Nolan said.

“With water contamination there’s a lag time between the time the contaminants enter the water and then enters the person and then the person gets ill….it could take years or decades before the contaminants reach people,” she said.

“What we are seeing is the tip of the iceberg and that the people who are sick now are basically our biomarkers.”

Behn fears his home territory, which is located in and around Fort Nelson, B.C., and which is at the centre of the Fractured Land documentary, will be destroyed if federal and provincial regulators do not take significant steps to determine the impact fracking operations have on local populations and the environment.

“Absence of proof of harm is not proof of the absence of harm,” Behn said.

A report commissioned and released by Environment Canada last year concluded the potential threat of fracking operations on groundwater “cannot be assessed because of a lack of scientific data and understanding."

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Chemicals released into the air and water during fracking operations may result in human health problems ranging from birth defects to decreased semen quality, a U.S study has found.

University of Missouri researcher Susan Nagel and colleagues from the Institute for Health and the Environment and the Center for Environmental Health conducted the most extensive review to date of research on fracking by-products and effects on human reproductive and environmental health. They concluded that exposure to chemicals used in fracking may be harmful to human health.

The paper, Reproductive and Developmental Effects of Chemicals Associated with Unconventional Oil and Natural Gas Operations, published in the peer-reviewed journal Reviews on Environmental Health recommends further study.

“We examined more than 150 peer-reviewed studies reporting on the effects of chemicals used in unconventional oil and gas operations and found evidence to suggest there is cause for concern for human health,” Nagel said.

“Further, we found that previous studies suggest that adult and early life exposure to chemicals associated with unconventional oil and gas operations can result in adverse reproductive health and developmental defects in humans.”

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing by pressurized liquid, is used to release natural gas from underground rock. A high pressure fluid, usually made up of chemicals and sand suspended in water, is injected into deep rock formations to create cracks, making vast caches of natural gas, previously trapped in buried rock, accessible.

Over the last decade, as the practice has become more common in Canada and the U.S., concerns have grown about contamination of ground water, depletion of fresh water, air quality, gas blowouts and the possibility that fracking will trigger earthquakes.

In north eastern B.C., where there are vast reserves of shale gas, controversy has raged and the use of river and lake water for fracking has been challenged in the B.C. Supreme Court by a coalition of environmental groups.

The University of Missouri-led study looked at previous research on air and water near fracking operations and concluded that exposure to fracking-caused pollution may be linked to health problems in humans and animals, including infertility, miscarriage, impaired fetal growth, birth defects and reduced semen quality.

“There are far fewer human studies than animal studies, however, taken together, the studies did show that humans can be harmed by these chemicals released from fracking,” said Nagel, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and women’s health at the University of Missouri School of Medicine.

“There is a striking need for continued research on unconventional oil and gas processes and chemicals and the health outcomes in people.”

Photo: Maryland Sierra Club via Flickr

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The B.C. government’s claim that LNG exports offer the “greatest single step British Columbia can take to fight climate change” is inaccurate in the absence of stronger global climate policies according to a new report released today by the Pembina Institute and the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions.

Natural gas does have a role to play in a world that avoids two degrees Celsius in global warming, but only if strong emissions reduction policies are put in place in the jurisdictions that produce and consume the gas, says the report, LNG and Climate Change: The Global Context authored by Matt Horne and Josha MacNab.

“Natural gas is often described as a bridge fuel. The question is, how long should that bridge be?” says MacNab, B.C. regional director for the Pembina Institute, a national non-profit focused on transitioning Canada to a clean energy future.

“Our research suggests it must be very short if we’re going to be able to get off the bridge in time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.”

If strong climate policies were put in place to avoid reaching more than two degrees of warming, the burning of natural gas would peak by 2030 and drop below current levels by mid century, according to the report.

Under that scenario, energy efficiency, renewables and nuclear would increase significantly while the use of fossil fuels drops.

“It’s climate policy that will determine coal use, not the availability of natural gas,” MacNab says. “It’s not simply a question of LNG and coal swapping out for each other.”

The B.C. government’s claim, which was made during the February 2014 throne speech, is premised on two assumptions.

The first is that natural gas is cleaner than coal. On that point, MacNab said that in most cases natural gas is 10 to 40 per cent cleaner than coal assuming that methane is safely managed. However, the Pembina Institute report also notes that there “remains material uncertainty” about the life cycle emissions of natural gas that requires additional research.

The second assumption the B.C. government makes is that LNG will replace coal.

“In a world with weak climate policy, natural gas will not reduce coal use,” says Horne, B.C. associate regional director for the Pembina Institute. “Without a global push for low carbon energy sources and efficiency, LNG will likely worsen rather than ease global warming.”

The institute’s findings are in line with a report published last week in Nature, which found that cheap abundant natural gas will actually delay any efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

B.C. Needs to Put Emissions Reduction Policies Before LNG Strategy

To draw its conclusions, the Pembina Institute report compares the role of natural gas under two different scenarios: one in which global warming is limited to two degrees Celsius and one that stays on the business as usual path. The comparison yields two very different roles for natural gas — either as part of an energy mix that helps avoid dangerous climate change or as part of an energy mix that accelerates the world down the path to dangerous climate change.

“Instead of leading with LNG and natural gas strategies, jurisdictions — B.C. included — need to lead with emissions reduction policies,” the report says.

To avoid more than two degrees of warming and keep atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases below 450 parts per million, the International Energy Agency says policies need to include economy-wide carbon pricing, the phase out of fossil fuel subsidies, emissions standards on power plants and a renewable transportation fuel standard.

The Pembina Institute makes three recommendations to the B.C. government to increase the chances that B.C.’s LNG industry can be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem, including applying an evidence-based approach in assessing energy exports, strengthening domestic efforts to reduce emissions from natural gas and LNG development and playing a more proactive role on climate change and methane management globally.

If strong climate change policy was enacted on a global level, natural gas use would peak by 2030 — just 15 years from now. What does that mean in terms of B.C.’s plans to build an LNG industry?

“We would encourage the B.C. government to be thinking about that in terms of the long-term sustainability of the industry,” MacNab says. “B.C. ought to be careful in hitching its economic wagon to a resource that will decline in a carbon-constrained world."

Photo: Christy Clark at LNG Canada announcement via Province of British Columbia on Flickr

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Although city officials from Dawson’s Creek won’t disclose the names of the companies involved, they are confirming that fracking waste has been illegally dumped into the city’s water treatment system on at least two occasions.

Jim Chute, administrative officer for the city, told DeSmog Canada, that illegal dumping has occurred at least three times, but twice the waste was “clearly” related to fracking.

“It has actually been on three occasions in the last 18 months where we’ve caught inappropriate materials being dumped,” he said. “One of those was a load of contaminated diesel. It’s not clear to us exactly how that diesel got contaminated so we don’t know if that was frack-related or not.”

“The other two were a mix of compounds that were clearly flowback waste from a frack operation.”

Chute said the chemicals used in the fracking process can damage the city’s water and sewage treatment facilities which are unable to handle industrial waste. Chute told the Alaska Highway News the waste could cause irreversible damage to living organisms that play a crucial role in the city’s water reclamation system.

Fracking in northeastern B.C.

Fracking, otherwise known as high-volume slickwater hydraulic fracturing, is a controversial extraction process used to free oil and gas from tight rock formations using extremely high pressures and large amounts of toxic chemicals.

The incidents in Dawson Creek involved subcontractors of the gas companies, Chute told DeSmog Canada, saying “virtually all jobs are outsourced to subtrades.”

“If you’re Encana Corporation, you probably don’t drill that well yourself, it’s probably contracted out to a subcontractor like Precision Drilling. And then Precision Drilling themselves don’t build the lease roads, they contract that out to a subcontractor…and they don’t do their own waste disposal, they contract that out.”

“It’s so busy up here,” Chute said.

“The situations we’ve encountered in every case has been an independent contractor to a company who signs on to a company [saying] they will dispose of the waste in an appropriate manner…and then behave badly, try to save themselves some money by coming to our dump instead of going to the proper spot.”

Chute told the Alaska Highway News the contractors were fined and responsible for cleaning the contaminated holding tanks.

Toxic wastewater a problem for industry

The B.C. Oil and Gas Commission, the provincial oil and gas regulator, is responsible for monitoring the activity of fracking companies, including the disposal of wastewater. B.C. has several private wastewater facilities where recyclable water is separated from toxic waste, which is then disposed of in underground injection wells.

In an emailed statement, B.C. Oil and Gas Commission communications coordinator Hardy Friedrich said, “B.C. has strict regulations related to the disposal of oil and gas waste in the Oil and Gas Waste Regulation and the Hazardous Waste Regulation.”

He added: “Fluids used in hydraulic fracturing must be disposed in a deep underground formation via a service well. Most other waste must be disposed at an approved disposal facility. There are currently 106 operating deep well disposal sites in northeast B.C.”

The difficulty of disposing of wastewater from fracking operations is a problem that has plagued the industry across North America. Flowback fluid from a fracking well includes toxic chemicals and oftentimes radioactive elements from extremely deep wells.

Most municipal wastewater systems are not equipped with the technology to handle such toxic waste in such high volumes.

Dawson Creek, located in the shale gas-rich Montney Basin, has seen a major increase in gas companies in recent years. The Montney Basin, along with the Horn River Basin also in northeastern B.C., could potentially account for 22 per cent of all North American shale gas production by 2020 according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

In the early years of B.C.'s shale gas boom, Grant Shomody, president of Grantech Engineering International, warned of the potential problems producers would face when it comes to wastewater disposal in the Montney:

“If this play develops as producers hope, the number of wells being drilled would severely tax local water resources. In that case, we can expect a lot of ecologically related criticism. There’s also the problem of disposing of the frac water or treating it for reuse. It’s expensive, and Montney producers have not installed water treatment capabilities at their plants.”

A challenge and liability for Dawson Creek

Chute expressed concern with illegal dumping of fracking wastewater, especially in light of new Environment Canada rules, which could hold city officials accountable for negligence.

“Previously there had been less onerous regulations, around how anyone who is a sewage treatment operator or handler of sewage…in order to prevent unauthorized discharge into watercourses,” Chute explained.

These new federal regulations are more strenuous and more robust than any that had been in place in the past, Chute said.

“The onus was put on us to ensure we had the safeguards in place that nothing escaped into the environment. Part and parcel because of that, and [how] thinking changed around Enron and evidence of bad corporate behaviour, part of the regulations imposed personal liability on the people responsible.”

“In Dawson Creek, that would be me,” he said.

Dawson Creek is moving to a new system, said Chute, where a failsafe dump station will monitor regularly for harmful compounds. If those compounds are found, the waste will be prevented from entering the regular treatment system.

Chute says the new facility, which will cost nearly $4 million to build, will be continuously monitored during open hours, 12 hours a day, six days a week.

“All of this is to make sure unauthorized industrial waste doesn’t go into our system.”

“We are going to make sure that we catch anybody that tries to circumvent the system by coming to us because we’re a shorter haul than they’d have to go to the proper spot.”

Image Credit: Fracking water storage near Hudson's Hope in B.C. Image from the CCPA report: Fracking Up B.C.

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Residents of the Northwest Territories are demanding environmental reviews be conducted before companies are permitted to ‘frack’ for oil in the NWT. Despite controversy in Canada and other countries around the effects fracking or hydraulic fracturing has on water and climate change, the NWT’s first fracking project was approved last October without an environmental assessment.

“We can’t let another fracking project dodge an environmental assessment,” says Lois Little of the Council of Canadians NWT chapter.

“There is a lot of international concern about the environmental and social impacts of fracking,” says Ben McDonald, spokesperson for Alternatives North, a social justice coalition in NWT. “The moratoriums on fracking in the U.S. and eastern Canada are in place for good reasons.”

The Council of Canadians, Alternatives North along with Ecology North have launched a petition calling on the NWT government to refer fracking projects to environmental assessments that include public hearings from now on. Signatures will be collected until March 7th when the petition will be delivered to the NWT legislative assembly. Two hundred and fifty NWT residents have signed the petition.

“A full, thorough environmental assessment would provide all levels of government with information on the possible impacts of fracking on the NWT and create a venue for all voices to be heard,” says Christine Wenman, a water management campaigner with Ecology North, an environmental organization based in Yellowknife.

NWT Canol shale oil play could rival Bakken shale

The central NWT region called the Sahtu is home to the Canol shale, a shale oil play that could rival the booming Bakken shale oil industry in North Dakota. Shale oil (not to be confused with oil shale) is oil locked in the pores of rock-like shale underground. The Sahtu itself is an area of pristine wilderness accessed by ice roads and many residents live off the land.

The Sahtu Region

The method commonly associated with shale gas development – fracking – is employed by industry to release the oil trapped in the shale. ‘Frack wells’ are drilled vertically between two hundred to two thousands meters to penetrate the shale and then horizontally through the shale up to three kilometers. Pressurized water laced with chemicals is shot down the well to break apart the shale and force the oil to the surface.

Improperly constructed or cracked frack wells have contaminated water tables with methane (natural gas is mainly methane) or fracking chemicals, some of which are toxic.

“No one has done any mapping locating the underground waterways or aquifers of the Sahtu. We are playing in the dark here,” Little told DeSmog Canada.

Many of the proposed fracking operations in the Sahtu would take place along the Mackenzie River, the main artery of the Mackenzie River Water Basin, one of the world’s largest watersheds and Canada's 'Serengeti.'

“An EA (environmental assessment) would be a sober second thought about fracking in NWT before its too late,” NWT MLA Bob Bromley told DeSmog Canada in an interview. Earlier this week Bromley expressed his suspicions that NWT government employees were being discouraged from signing the petition for environmental reviews of fracking projects.

Canadian oil and gas on pace to be No.1 contributor to climate change

“There is a fundamental problem in developing the Canol shale when we know the impact producing more greenhouse gases will have on climate change,” says Bromley.

Methane once unlocked from shale during fracking operations can escape into water tables and the atmosphere. If it makes it above ground, methane is a powerful greenhouse gas.

Over twenty year period methane has eighty-four times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide according the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) latest findings. This global warming potential is thirty-four times greater than carbon dioxide over one hundred years.

A DeSmog Canada exclusive revealed last year Canada is most likely already under reporting escaped methane emissions or fugitive emissions from the oil and gas sector. Even with these inaccuracies in calculating fugitive emissions Environment Canada projects the oil and gas sector will be Canada’s biggest contributor to global warming by 2030. Canada’s overall greenhouse gas emissions are expected to increase 38% by 2030 as well.

Source: Canada's 6th National Report on Climate Change 2014

“Pursuing fossil fuels projects takes us in the wrong direction. Fossils fuels belong with the dinosaurs,” Bromley told DeSmog.

The Bakken shale oil industry in North Dakota burns off or flares around 30% of the natural gas byproduct that comes with fracking on the Bakken shale. An estimated $1 billion worth of natural gas was flared in 2012 alone. This is equivalent of adding one million more carbon dioxide emitting cars on the road.

Social impacts of fracking already emerging in the Sahtu 

Divisions are already emerging in the five Sahtu communities over developing the Canol shale. Sheila Karkagie of Tulita in the Sahtu received a death threat last January for her strong stance against fracking.

“I was scared and I was hurt,” Sheila Karkagie told CBC in an interview about the threat. “I'm fighting for my dad's land, because this is his land, his trap lines, his everything; our means of living, our backyard, our everything!”

The death threat came via telephone after Karkagie publicly stated past members of the Tulita Land and Financial Board are in conflict of interest for approving ConocoPhillips fracking project – NWT’s first fracking project – and then accepting contracts with oil and gas companies afterwards.

“We are seeing divisiveness in communities where it seldom existed before,” says NWT MLA Bromley.

“The lack of a thorough public process on the issue is causing stress, anxiety and pitting people against each other in the Sahtu communities,” Lois Little of the Council of Canadians told DeSmog. The Council of Canadians, one of the Canada’s foremost water advocacy groups, released a ‘Fractivist Toolkit’ earlier this month to assist Canadians confronting fracking in their communities.

The petition for environmental assessments of fracking projects in NWT can be found on the NWT legislative assembly’s website:

http://epetition.lant.public-i.tv/epetition_core/community/petition/2614

Image Credit: Transnational Institute, Council of Canadians, Environment Canada

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The Ontario Energy Board’s approval of three natural gas projects last week puts the province’s plans to significantly reduce Ontario’s carbon footprint in jeopardy.

The ruling also gives Ontario the green light to import controversial shale gas from the U.S. This type of gas is trapped in rock-like shale and is extracted using a process called hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, which involves pumping a chemical mix underground at high temperatures to break apart the rock and free the gas. The practice has caused controversy worldwide due to fracking chemicals and methane contaminating drinking water.

“So often we see approvals given to pipeline and fossil fuel projects without a real understanding of the broader and long-term impacts on climate, water and public health,” says Emma Lui, a water campaigner with the Council of Canadians.

The interdependent projects — two by Union Gas and one from Enbridge Gas — will expand the natural gas supply and delivery network in southern Ontario. Consuming more natural gas, particularly a more polluting form of natural gas, are direct contradictions with the province’s strong greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.

“Energy conservation is the lowest cost method to keep our homes warm. It creates jobs and reduces our greenhouse gas emissions and energy bills,” Jack Gibbons, director of the Ontario Clear Air Alliance, told DeSmog Canada in an interview.

Burning natural gas to heat homes and produce electricity accounts for 35 per cent of Ontario’s energy-related carbon footprint. Ontario plans to achieve a 15 per cent reduction in the province’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and a reduction of 80 per cent by 2050 (based on 1990 levels).

“Buildings are the third largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in the province, making it important to save as much energy in heating them as possible,” Gillian McEachern, campaigns director of Environmental Defence, told DeSmog Canada. “Conservation needs to be a requirement before companies are given approval to expand infrastructure."

Environmental Defence, Council of Canadians and the Ontario Clean Air Alliance all found the Ontario Energy Boards’s decision a “disappointment.” They also disputed the need for the project because the alternatives were not properly considered.

The energy board criticized Enbridge Gas for only taking a “cursory” look at energy conservation as an alternative to its project, known as the GTA project. In the future, the board “expects applicants to provide a more rigorous examination of demand side alternatives, including rate options, in all gas leave to construct applications.”

Ontario Clean Air Alliance estimates Ontario could save $1.4 billion over 10 years if spending on energy conservation is increased. Installing more insulation and high-efficiency windows in homes, replacing aging furnaces with new models and switching to geothermal energy for space and water heating are just some of the ways of achieving these savings.

Ontario Needs To Increase Incentives For Energy Conservation

Ontario provides financial incentives for Enbridge Gas and Union Gas — Ontario’s main natural gas distributors — to invest in energy conservation, but only to a point.

The Ontario Energy Board has put a cap on gas companies surpassing their energy conservation targets — meaning the financial rewards stop once a company exceeds its conservation targets by more than 50 per cent.

The caps on financial rewards for energy conservation are “penny wise and pound foolish” and do not benefit Ontario according to Ontario Clean Air Alliance. The organization recommends the energy board remove the caps “subject to the constraint that this must not lead to undue rate increases” for Ontarians.

Pinning Ontario’s Energy Future on Fracked Gas Is Precarious At Best

During the public hearings on the gas projects, the Council of Canadians, one of Canada’s leading water advocacy groups, argued pinning Ontario’s energy future on U.S. shale gas was precarious at best.

Three reports from U.S. experts provided by the Council of Canadians indicated upcoming bans and moratoriums on fracking and gas wells nearing the end of their lives will make importing fracked gas less economical for Ontario in the future. This could increase energy costs for Ontarians in the end.

“While the image of tap water on fire has become iconic about the risks of fracking shale gas, the climate impacts are less understood,” says Andrea Harden-Donahue, a climate and energy campaigner with the Council of Canadians.

Fracking wells leak methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. The world’s leading scientific body on climate issues, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, estimates methane has 84 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.

The Ontario Energy Board appeared unmoved by the argument against using fracked shale gas:

“There are currently no regulations in Ontario or at the Canadian federal level which prohibit shale gas production or transportation.”

Quebec, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia have all placed moratoriums on fracking.

Ontario Energy Board Decision Clears A Hurdle for Energy East Oil Pipeline

TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline proposal could benefit from Ontario’s decision to import large quantities of U.S. shale gas.

Part of the pipeline project to ship western Canadian oil to New Brunswick involves converting a natural gas pipeline running from Alberta to Ontario. Ontario receives almost half its natural gas through this particular pipeline system at the moment.

The prospect of Ontario losing a source of natural gas prompted the Ontario government to announce an assessment of the Energy East project on its costs and benefits for Ontarians. 

Now that Ontario will be able to tap into the booming shale gas industry of the U.S. the provincial government’s scrutiny of Energy East may not be that severe.

“The OEB decision helps lay the groundwork for Energy East,” Harden-Donahue told DeSmog Canada. “This is bad news all around for the region which could have the biggest tarsands pipeline snacking through it and be increasingly reliant on socially and environmentally damaging fracked gas imports."

Image Credit: Allen York, OCAA, OEB, Fracking Resources

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