If you’d met John Werring four years ago, he wouldn’t have been able to tell you what an abandoned gas well looked like.

“We had no idea whether they were even accessible,” said the registered professional biologist.

That was before the summer of 2014, when he headed up to Fort St. John, B.C., on a reconnaissance mission. At that time, much was known about leaking gas wells in the United States, but there was very little data on Canada.

All Werring had to work with was a map of abandoned wells provided by B.C.’s Oil and Gas Commission. Armed with a gas monitor and a metal detector, he headed into what the gas industry calls the “Montney formation,” one of the largest shale gas resources in the world. Shale gas is primarily accessed via hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking.

“Most of these places, there’s nobody in the field,” Werring said. “You won’t see anybody for miles and miles. Just well after well after well.”

In some areas, Werring — a senior science and policy advisor with the David Suzuki Foundation — could detect gas leaking from the wells just with his nose. His curiosity was officially piqued.

‘Out of sight, out of mind’

Fast forward three summers and Werring has now logged more than 10,000 kilometres on B.C.’s oil and gas roads in the hunt for leaking wells. In the process, he has revealed that B.C. is vastly underreporting its “fugitive emissions” — emissions vented or leaked during the natural gas extraction process.

“The whole city of Fort St. John is surrounded by wells,” Werring said. “The further away we got from the centre of Fort St. John the worse the conditions were in the field in terms of well maintenance. Out of sight, out of mind. No company was immune.”

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