Tag Archives: shale gas

Jul 31 2013
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Corporate Responsibility, Energy, Oil and Gas

“Common ground” initiative makes common sense

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Proof, perhaps, that the best ideas on just about everything originate far from the cocoons and cloisters of governments and corporations, the Atlantica Centre for Energy, based in Saint John, is injecting a long-overdue dose of sanity into New Brunswick’s shale gas debate.

In fact, the outline of its scheme, called “common ground”, to encourage “dialogue” among opponents and supporters of onshore petroleum development in the province – particularly, on the hot-button issue of hydraulic fracturing – makes so much sense, I’m puzzled – even a little annoyed – I didn’t think of it, myself.

The approach is simple enough.

We know that many rational people here are deeply worried about the effects on potable water and soil of large-scale fracking operations, and that, given the industry’s track record over the decades in other parts of North America, they have good reason.

We also know that exploration companies in New Brunswick insist that their technologies and practices have substantially improved, in recent years, and that provincial regulations governing their activities are among the strictest in the world.

Furthermore, we know that the debate has been hung up on competing definitions of what is actually knowable – a sort of epistemological hornet’s nest of a priori and a posteriori suppositions – about an industry that has not yet determined whether there is enough recoverable resource to justify commercial enterprise.

So, the Atlantica Centre reasonably argues, why not create an online podium for both sides – unedited, unfiltered, utterly transparent? Why not build a series of videos that present the divergent opinions, for and against, post them to its website and invite public reaction?

Or, as the group’s president, John Herron, told the Telegraph-Journal on Monday, “My view is that in the old days industry used to come to town and say, ‘I promise you jobs and growth – love me.’ That doesn’t work anymore. You can’t address an environmental concern or a health concern with an economic response.”

In fact, he added, “The minimum we owe each other is a dialogue, and if there is a process that people feel they can participate in, if there is a safe place where those different perspectives can be exchanged, I think we can identify points of agreements on many aspects that we are currently not. . .Consultation and engagement really has to be an ongoing, progressive process. It can’t be an event or even a series of events, and if there isn’t a process in place that people have confidence in, it’s not by accident that the default response in many cases becomes protest.”

Naturally, the key is creating that “safe place”. To this end, the Centre appears to have given serious thought to the breadth of representation that’s necessary to legitimize its venture. The first video, according to the T-J, incorporates commentary from “Cyril Polchies from the Elsipogtog First Nation; Jim Emberger, a Taymouth resident who is part of an alliance of New Brunswick community groups against the development of shale gas; Green Party Leader David Coon; NDP Leader Dominic Cardy; Stephanie Merrill of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick; Barbara Pike, executive director of the Maritimes Energy Association; and Donald Savoie, the Canada Research Chair in Public Policy and Administration at l’Université de Moncton.”

Of course, none of this will fully immunize Mr. Herron and his association from criticism. The Atlantica Centre’s membership roll is a who’s who of business interests in the province. It includes Canaport LNG, Deloitte, Emera, Ernst & Young, Fundy Engineering, IPR-GDF SUEZ North America, Irving Oil Ltd., J.D. Irving Ltd., Maritimes Northeast Pipeline, NB Power, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Stantec. It also includes the two heaviest of hitters in the province’s shale gas game: Corridor Resources and Southwestern Energy.

But, these affiliations, alone, should not automatically dilute public confidence in the authenticity of the Centre’s project. Industry has known, for some time, that it can’t merely brush aside principled opposition. Until now, though, it hasn’t had the faintest clue about how to communicate its points to the broader public.

Letting its critics have their say, without ginning up the traditional spin machine, is a fresh idea whose time has finally come round.

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Jul 03 2013
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Energy, Oil and Gas

Injecting reason into the fracking debate

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For academic geologists, who study the world’s reserves of oil and gas, which have slumbered beneath the surface for millions of years, time is a meaningless concept. For public officials, embroiled in the politics of petroleum development, it’s the only thing that matters. Or it should be.

One of the broad and exquisite ironies (and there are many) about the gathering controversy over shale gas in New Brunswick is that the provincial government has only just figured this out.

For months, if not years, elected representatives of the Tory persuasion have ceded nearly all of the high ground in the battle to win the hearts and minds of the great, voting unwashed to the Internet-mining, documentary-viewing, anti-fracking, fossil-fuel-loathing constituency.

At times, Premier David Alward’s cabineteers have seemed downright flummoxed by the vehemence of opposition to shale gas development in the province. After all, they said as they scratched their scalps, as we don’t yet know whether there is an actual industry to despise, shouldn’t we identify its true, commercial potential before we lose our collective minds to inchoate outrage?

But, of course, such musings are not how you win a revolution. Environmental and community activists know well the first rule of effective civil action: Don’t wait for your enemy to set the agenda.

This is especially important in circumstances where your enemy has more money than God. If and when shale gas companies actually do fire up their production platforms, no amount of peaceful – if vitriolic – protest will ever shut them down. Only economics can achieve this. Hence, the marvelously orchestrated fury.

Lately, though, the Province has stepped up its game in defence of what it might term the prudent development of shale gas in New Brunswick. In two, surprisingly articulate, commentaries carried by the Times & Transcript’s sister organ, the Telegraph-Journal, Energy and Mines Minister Craig Leonard sets out his case. First, he says in so many words, “We can’t afford to do nothing,” before he declares, “We will ensure we can enjoy the economic benefits. . .while proceeding in a safe, responsible and sustainable manner.”

Of these, the strongest argument is the latter and, again, one wonders why it’s taken this long to make it this cogently.

At the heart of the opposition to shale gas is the conviction that hydraulic fracturing is inherently injurious to the environment and, by extension, to communities proximate to drilling operations. To support the claim, critics produce a virtual trove of information, gleaned from the Web, that clearly demonstrate just how fully industry players have desecrated whole regions of the United States with faint regard for their responsibilities, above those that secure shareholder values.

Some of the “proof” is spurious; some of it is persuasive. (Valid or not, it’s hard to counter a homeowner’s assertion that he abandoned the family farm because his once healthy child began coughing blood only after the nearby rig started drilling).

And yet the massive hole in this argument, through which no one in public office (until now) has seen fit to drive a rhetorical truck, is that New Brunswick’s opportunity lies before it. The province has a chance to do things better and more safely. It is not tethered to shoddy regulations and “industry-friendly” arrangements. It starts with a clean slate. Or, as Mr. Leonard, writes: “We designed the new rules for industry to ensure issues with the industry faced by other jurisdiction will not occur here.

“Whether it is requiring that all fluids used in the gas extraction process are kept in a closed loop system to ensure no contact with the land, the constant monitoring of air and water or improved construction of the wellbore, our rules will protect the land, water and air.”

The other piece is that no two shale plays are exactly alike. The experiences of one region are not reliably transferrable to another simply because we invoke the word “fracking” – like some, dark incantation – to describe industrial activity in both.

Mr. Leonard’s arguments will not convince everyone, of course. But they are, at least, useful contributions to what should be an informed, public debate. And, for once,  they are timely.

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Jun 26 2013
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Economy, Energy, Oil and Gas, Politics, Science

On seismic testing, just the facts please

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Those of us who remain curious about the economic potential of onshore tight oil and gas in New Brunswick might as well face it: There is no perfectly safe way to develop an industry that pulls vast quantities of petroleum from the ground. There never has been, and there never will be.

The only thing that matters is identifying the level of risk we are prepared to assume in return for jobs, royalties and tax revenues. And to do this, we need facts. But where are they?

The news media is in its element when it covers controversy. Altercations and recriminations between shale gas protestors along Highway 126 and SWN Resources, which is undertaking exploration there, make headlines. Dispassionate examinations of the claims both for and against the technologies involved more often do not.

And so, we are left sifting through emotionally charged assertions for clues of validity. We are left, for example, parsing this statement from a local resident, whom the CBC quoted in a story the other day: “There’s lots of money in Alberta, but when people come home they don’t want to see this. The money is good, but the money isn’t everything. . .They still put charges of dynamite in the ground and they still blast them.”

He was referring to the practice of seismic testing, which, according to the website naturalgas.org, “artificially (creates) waves, the reflection of which are then picked up by sensitive pieces of equipment called ‘geophones’ that are embedded in the ground.” Essentially, the procedure takes a picture of what lies beneath.

The question, of course, is whether this citizen’s concerns about the potentially catastrophic effects of the process on the water table and broader environment  – which, not incidentally, mirror those of many others in the province – are justified.

Or is Marc Belliveau of the provincial Department of Energy and Mines closer to the truth? Yesterday, he told this newspaper, “There is, unfortunately, a lot of misconceptions of what seismic testing is and what it is not. . .It’s used in making highways, it’s used in finding water sources for municipalities. . .There was seismic testing carried out along more than 500 kilometres in New Brunswick two years ago. . .There were no issues.”

Still, that was then. What about now? Back in the stone age, when I briefly majored in Geology at university, seismic testing was breakthrough technology in the oil and gas industry. And, like all breakthrough technologies – which are, by their natures, intrusive – this one did cause “issues”.

Even today, the procedure can be problematic. Earlier this month, oil and gas companies in the Gulf of Mexico agreed to forgo using the technology over concerns that it may harm marine life. According to a news report from KNOE.com, “Michael Jasny of the Natural Resources Development Council says the (moratorium) will give the government and industry time for required environmental studies and research.”

That said, the best evidence suggests that seismic testing in New Brunswick is about as safe as can be expected given the province’s regulatory framework and SWN’s statement of exploration practice, which appears on its website.

“The vibroseis technique is only used on roadways and provides quality signals with minimal disturbance,” the company declares. “Seismic vibrator trucks are equipped with an underlying vibrating plate to generate specific sound signals. . .The strength of the signal from one seismic vibrator truck is very small; several trucks need to be activated simultaneously to create a signal strong enough to be recorded. These vehicles create noise levels similar to that made by a logging truck.”

When no roads are available, SWN says it deploys the “shot hole technique”. In these instances, the company clears “a maximum three metre-wide path for a drill vehicle in the woods. No vegetation larger than 15 centimeters in diameter is cut. The track-mounted drill vehicle drills a hole 15 metres deep. A small seismic source is placed at the bottom of the hole and is sealed with clay and drill cuttings per provincial regulations. When safely secured, the source is activated with specialized equipment. Afterwards, the area is restored to its original state.”

Whether or not this statement can allay public concern depends entirely on the degree to which one is willing to allow fact to triumph over fear.

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Jun 23 2013
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Economy, Energy, Environment, Politics

Denial and deflection on shale gas

Too much official hot air as shale gas in New Brunswick bloats expectations

Too much official hot air as shale gas in New Brunswick bloats expectations

Into each political life, a little denial must fall. But the New Brunswick government’s contention that the tide of opinion in the province is turning in favor of shale gas development seems particularly delusional.

Survey after survey have clearly established that more people than not believe tight petroleum drilling – which employs the controversial method of hydraulic fracturing – poses a threat to the environment and, by extension, to communities in rural areas. A recent Corporate Research Associates (CRA) poll merely confirms what we have known for months.

“New Brunswick residents are concerned about the safety of shale gas exploration and are split on whether the process is important to the economic future of the province,” the Halifax-based opinion-taker announced this week. “One-half (48 per cent) of residents believe shale gas to be critically important or important but not critical to New Brunswick’s economic future, while a similar number (44 per cent) believe it to be not very important or not at all important to the economy of the province.”

Meanwhile, “when asked (about) the safety of shale gas exploration, on a scale of ‘1’ to ‘10’ where ‘1’ is not safe at all and ’10’ is extremely safe, the average rating was 3.9 indicating many residents perceive shale gas exploration to be unsafe. Those in the Northern Region (3.3) and Moncton area (3.5) are more likely to consider the exploration of shale gas unsafe compared with those in the Southern region (4.6).”

All of which moved CRA’s chairman Don Mills to observe, “it is clear that there will be significant and continuing challenges to government and industry in the development of shale gas resources in the province of New Brunswick.”

In an interview with the Telegraph-Journal this week, he went further: “The results say to me that the provincial government and the industry are both in a tough corner right now. . .There are so many people who believe that fracking is unsafe, I think the opponents of shale gas have won the day on that argument, at least at this point.”

What, then, justifies Energy Minister Craig Leonard’s sunny disposition? He also told the TJ this week, “(People) need to understand that we have the strictest rules in North America in place. But the support is growing and from what we are hearing on the ground, most people we are discussing this with say that even if they have concerns with the process, they want us to see what kind of resource we do have through the exploration phase.”

That’s hardly a ringing public endorsement. People are always willing to consider the necessary evils of their circumstances as long as those evils remain hypothetical. The moment the drills go into the ground and the gas starts flowing in earnest, it’s a whole new ball game. For the provincial Tories, the game may already be over.

CRA’s early June survey found that support for the government, among decided voters in New Brunswick, had slipped to just 29 per cent, down from 32 per cent in March. The Liberals commanded a 41 per cent approval rating, up from 35 per cent in the earlier three-month period. These shifts in electoral preferences neatly coincide with Grit calls for a moratorium on further shale gas development.

Now, in a tactical tour de force (though farce may be a more accurate word), the provincial government is hoping to secure acquiescence to onshore exploration by conflating the effort with a potential eastern pipeline into Saint John – a project for which there is broad, if not unanimous, support. This sort of deflection, though common enough among politicians, almost never works. Worse, in most cases, it backfires.

The plain, hard truth is that leadership in public office inevitably entails disappointing and angering many of those who put you there.

If shale gas is, in the opinion of this government, worth pursuing, then get on with it – safely, responsibly and openly, of course. But leave out the sugarcoating and magic tricks. No one’s buying any of it.

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Jun 11 2013
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Business, Economy, Environment, Politics

New Brunswick’s biggest natural resource is fury

Seeing the forest for the trees in hydraulic fracturing

Seeing the forest for the trees in hydraulic fracturing

Those who believe that New Brunswickers are apathetic about their futures need only survey the province for visible signs of outrage, which are everywhere. Apparently, we are mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.

The question is: What is the “it” we refuse to “take”?

Once upon a time, it was the sale of NB Power to Hydro-Quebec. The contretemps over that issue brought down a government already reeling from the outcry over its proposals to establish a network of polytechnics in the province and reform French language instruction for Anglophones.

These days, it’s cuts to the public service, education and health care that have ignited the pyres of dissent from Sackville to Edmundston.

No issue, however, is as incendiary as hydraulic fracturing, with its dark promise to pollute and sunder communities wherever the shale gas industry sinks its wells.

Last week, the RCMP arrested three people – about 120 kilometers north of Moncton – who were protesting SWN Resources seismic testing (advance work in the exploration of tight petroleum plays). The cops said the trio refused to make way for trucks. Other observers at the scene said the authorities overreacted.

For his part, Brad Walters a professor of environmental studies professor at Mount A, called it a sign of the times, to which we should grow accustomed. He told  CTV it reflects “a combination of things coming together here. . .There is this network of over 30 groups across the province who are talking to each other and are very strongly opposed to shale gas development.”

Call it the immoveable object that meets an unstoppable force, but opposition to shale gas in this province has become a permanent feature of the landscape. No careful ministrations by the provincial government, promising to enforce the “toughest” regulations in North America – no vows by industry representatives to adhere to only the highest standards of environmental stewardship – are likely to placate the critics.

This worries people like Susan Holt, president and CEO of the New Brunswick Business Council, which commissioned a report, released recently, on the economic potential of shale gas in the province. “Some of the opposition is a little bit disconcerting to industry because it appears to be general industry opposition rather than specific,” she told the Telegraph-Journal’s Chris Morris. “When New Brunswickers resist general industrial activity, that is more nerve-racking for our folks because it begs the question, how do we develop our economy?”

How, indeed?

Legitimate concerns about water and soil degradation and principled stands against fossil fuels warming the planetary orb only partially explain the current antagonism. At the heart of the hostility to shale gas is a position against which there is no defence: People simply detest the idea of it. Onshore petroleum development somehow cuts against the weave of the province’s social fabric.

The identical mental dynamic was at work when potash was first developed. It was in even planer view when wind turbines began dotting the countryside. Lest we forget uranium?

Logic is a blunt instrument of persuasion when passions are running high, as they tend to do when statements from the provincial Department of Energy and Mine declare that “Nine companies hold a Crown license to search and/or lease within New Brunswick. These include a total of 71 rights agreements, covering over 1.4 million hectares, for the exploration and production of oil and natural gas.”

In fact, the Province has spent a good deal of time touting New Brunswick as the undisputed nexus of the emerging tight oil and gas industry in Atlantic Canada. Estimates, it likes to say, peg the volume of natural gas trapped between layers of sedimentary rock hundreds, or even thousands, of meters beneath the soil’s surface at close to 77 trillion cubic feet.

What it – and industry, itself – hasn’t spent much effort doing is reminding New Brunswickers that no one yet knows whether the resource is even commercially viable. Nor have they attempted to explain (until very recently) the safeguards that must attend its extraction and development.

Now, it may be too late to expect a sea change of attitude.

It’s a shame we can’t harness the energy from all the outrage we generate.

If we could, we’d never again worry about the future of our province.

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May 13 2013
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Energy, Environment, Oil and Gas

Shale gas flows with hot air

Is what lies beneath enough?

Is what lies beneath enough?

At the current rate of progress, shale gas in New Brunswick is fast becoming the best-regulated industry that never was.

After two, exhaustive reports by independent auditors and a best-practice framework covering the dos and don’ts of resource exploration, extraction and production, the Alward government has now released a 37-page “blueprint” that ties up the whole, messy business with a bright, Tory-blue bow.

All this even before the industry, itself, has determined whether shale gas is, in fact, commercially viable. And yet, there are those who continue to believe the province is not going far enough to protect the interests of average citizens from the presumed avarice of the petroleum lobby.

The blueprint, say the opposition Liberals, is conspicuous for its lack of rigor. Quoted in news reports, environment critic Bernard LeBlanc said, “New Brunswickers’ environment and health are at risk based on the actions of this government moving forward. There are glaring oversights in this document, including a proper discussion about greenhouse gas emissions.”

Added Green Party Leader David Coon: “A lot of what is in the document says, ‘the government will continue to‘ or that things will be ‘ongoing’. It doesn’t contain much new and it leaves out considerable things.”

In fact, though, absent an actual gas-producing industry, the blueprint goes about as far as it can and, indeed, should.

Much of the debate over shale gas development in this province has been wildly chimeric – informed as much by horror stories about industry’s past abuses in small towns and communities south of the border as by engineering science and the lessons lawmakers elsewhere in North America have learned.

Far less attention has been paid to likelihood of commercially exploiting a proportion of the estimated 67 trillion cubic feet of shale gas that lays beneath the surface in quantities sufficient to justify the cost and inevitable disruption, let alone the regulatory regime. At the moment, that’s not a question boosters, opponents or even governments can answer.

In a letter to the editor, published by Newsday in March, Jannette M. Barth (who is described as “the founder of the Pepacton Institute, an economic research and consulting firm”) writes: “Gains from shale gas development in the United States are greatly exaggerated. Macroeconomic models do not capture regional, state or local impacts. It is possible that the combined losses at these less-aggregate levels will be greater than any macroeconomic gains.”

She continues: “Peer-reviewed research and other research not funded by the natural gas industry have found only modest short-term employment gains to regions with shale gas development. Research also shows that economic impacts concluded by industry-sponsored studies are likely overstated, and that regions with shale gas development end up worse off in the long run, with higher levels of unemployment and long-term poverty.

“A survey of municipalities in 12 Marcellus-area counties in Pennsylvania  found that while 26 percent of the municipalities experienced increased expenditures from Marcellus Shale development, 75 percent said it had not increased their revenue, indicating that costs to communities are increasing without any offsetting increase in revenue.”

New Brunswick industry types will almost certainly take issue with these conclusions, but even they are determined to inject a note of caution into the discussion. As Brunswick News reported on Friday, Contact Exploration president Steve Harding thinks “there has been so much energy that has gone into this potential resource and, to be fair, that’s all it is today. We haven’t been able to quantify it as something that is commercial.”

Barbara Pike, executive director of the Maritimes Energy Association, concurs: “The fact that the government recognizes that we still don’t know whether there is a substantial onshore natural gas industry in New Brunswick. . is important.”

Until they do – know, that is – there’s not much point is wasting further breath on fanciful predictions of either doom or boom. If and when the industry decides to pull the trigger, that’s when a true, independent analysis of its claims should inform public policy and draft the next, and final, blueprint for New Brunswick’s energy future.

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