the tyee – Page 6 – Olduvai.ca

Regulator shuts down operations near Red Deer. Thousands protest in Sichuan.

Seismic hazard expert Gail Atkinson on dangerous earthquakes triggered by fracking: ‘It is not just happening in Western Canada. It can happen anywhere.’

On Monday Albertans living around the oil-service city of Red Deer, got an early morning wake-up call – a 4.6 earthquake.

Vesta Energy, a privately owned oil and gas company, halted its fracking operations west of the city after the company most likely triggered the quake that temporarily shut down power to nearly 5,000 residents.

It was one of the largest recorded tremors ever to shake central Alberta.

A day later, Mar. 5, the provincial energy regulator ordered the company to suspend fracking operations and report all seismic data for the last three months.

The order announced the regulator was suspending operations at the well site “in order to protect the public and the environment.” Among the harms fracking induced earthquakes can cause are “adverse effects to the environment, public safety and property damage and/or loss,” said the order.

The widely felt earthquake rattled dishes, cracked walls and swayed buildings.

“Crazy loud and very strange — feeling your house shake,” reported one citizen on social media. “What the heck just happened? Our whole house shook!!”

“Sounds like I just experienced my first earthquake in Red Deer… thought I was in a horror movie when my room started shaking in the black of night,” tweeted another resident.

Red Deer optician Melissa Hall tweeted: “HOLY EFF… did we just have an #earthquake?? My bed just shook like it took quarters at a bad motel!”

Meanwhile residents of Sichuan province in southwest China marched and grieved after a swarm of industry-triggered earthquakes rocked that shale gas basin on February 25.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Will BC’s Budding LNG Industry Spark More Quakes and Shake Northeast Housing Prices?

February 2, 2019

Will BC’s Budding LNG Industry Spark More Quakes and Shake Northeast Housing Prices?

Look at Oklahoma as a possible preview of things to come.

House damage in central Oklahoma from a magnitude 5.6 earthquake on Nov. 6, 2011. The cause was wastewater disposal in the oil and gas industry. Photo by Brian Sherrod, USGS.

B.C. Premier John Horgan and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could barely contain their glee last year when LNG Canada declared its $40-billion Kitimat export terminal and related pipeline were going ahead.

But neither leader mentioned the dramatic surge in horizontal drilling and fracking in northeastern B.C. that will be required to extract the natural gas (or methane) needed by LNG Canada. The plant will take methane, process it into liquefied natural gas and then export it overseas.

What Trudeau called the largest capital project in the nation’s history will initially process two billion cubic feet of methane a day — almost half B.C.’s current production. It has the capacity to scale up and gobble four billion cubic feet a day. That’s more than one-third of Canada’s total demand.

According to energy analyst David Hughes, the project will require the drilling of an additional 400 gas wells a year for 40 years, in addition to the almost 500 wells now being drilled annually.

If you want a preview of what that kind of rapid industry expansion brings, look at Oklahoma.

In that state, America’s fifth largest oil producer, earthquakes caused by industry wastewater injection have damaged homes, sparked lawsuits and a regulatory scramble, and even depressed housing prices.

The state and northern B.C. share a well-studied geological phenomenon: unprecedented earthquake activity caused by fluid injection into the ground — mostly wastewater injection in Oklahoma and massive fracking operations in B.C.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Malnutrition, Obesity and Climate Change Threaten Our Future, Warns Report

February 2, 2019

Malnutrition, Obesity and Climate Change Threaten Our Future, Warns Report

Lancet says three threats are interacting to create a dangerous ‘syndemic.’

Climate change is bringing crop failures, reduced food production, droughts and flooding, and civil unrest, report warns. Somalian Nuura Omar and her family were driven to an aid camp by drought. Photo from Oxfam, Creative Commons licensed.

The Lancet calls it the “Global Syndemic.” The report’s authors say we’re facing three pandemics — undernutrition, obesity and climate change — that are interacting to form a “synergy of epidemics,” or syndemic, and it’s a global problem.

Here’s how it works. Undernourished children in low-income and middle-income countries suffer from stunting, which makes them smaller than well-nourished children. But it also makes them more susceptible to obesity (which affects kids and adults in high-income countries even more). By 2015, obesity was affecting two billion people around the world. They’ve been set up to die of cardiovascular diseases, Type 2 diabetes and some cancers.

The report says, “Economic losses attributable to undernutrition are equivalent to 11 per cent of the GDP in Africa and Asia, or approximately $3.5 trillion annually.” As we add another billion undernourished people by 2030, those losses will worsen.

Meanwhile, climate change is having serious effects on human health, bringing “crop failures, reduced food production, extreme weather events that produce droughts and flooding, increased food-borne and other infectious diseases, and civil unrest.” Those climate effects, the report says, will end up costing five to 10 per cent of global GDP, while investing just one per cent of GDP could stop the increase in climate change.

The Lancet report is blunt about why we do so little, citing “the power of vested interests by commercial actors whose engagement in policy often constitutes a conflict of interest that is at odds with the public good and planetary health.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canada’s Petro Paralysis, Diagnosed

January 30, 2019

Canada’s Petro Paralysis, Diagnosed

Three books show how bitumen blocks democratic solutions to our climate crisis.

Protester at rally against the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Expansion project on Sept. 9, 2017 in Vancouver. Photo by William Chen, Creative Commons licensed.

Costly Fix: Power, Politics and Nature in the Tar Sands
Ian Urquhart
University of Toronto Press (2018)

Oil’s Deep State: How the Petroleum Industry Undermines Democracy and Stops Action on Global Warming
Kevin Taft
Lorimer (2017)

The Big Stall: How Big Oil and Think Tanks are Blocking Action on Climate Change in Canada
Donald Gutstein
Lorimer (2018)

Among the most vocal critics of this environmental assessment process, ironically, was Justin Trudeau himself, when he was on the 2015 campaign trail. He had promised to fix the federal environmental process to restore the trust of Canadians in resource decision-making. After the election, his new government struck a blue-ribbon panel to advise them on how to do just that.

Instead, 2018 saw the Trudeau government ignore most of the panel’s sensible recommendations, introducing instead Bill C-69, a legislative mash-up that, from a sustainability, transparency and accountability perspective, is likely to be worse than the Harper environmental assessment law that Trudeau railed against in 2015. Passed by the House, Bill C-69 is now hung up in the Senate, the target of a noisy misinformation campaign being led by a right-wing, astroturf group calling itself (I’m not kidding) “Suits and Boots.”

Meanwhile, under unrelenting pressure from Alberta Premier Rachel Notley to get shovels in the ground, the Trudeau government remitted the job of fixing the defective TMX review back to the National Energy Board, under the old Harper rules. To this end, it ordered a new board panel to do a high-speed reconsideration of the deficiencies the court had identified the first-time around. The deadline for intervenors to file their final written arguments to this new panel was last Tuesday.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Alberta Is Playing a Dangerous Game with Pipeline Ad Campaign

January 27, 2019

Alberta Is Playing a Dangerous Game with Pipeline Ad Campaign

The anti-BC PR blitz fuels the anger of right-wing groups like the ‘yellow vests.’

Alberta’s ad campaign, with its complaint of being ‘held hostage,’ risks unleashing destructive forces.

A Tyee investigation revealed the expensive details of Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s national public relations effort to scapegoat British Columbia, including dubious claims of pipeline benefits translated into Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Filipino and Punjabi.

Not merely cynical and inaccurate, the campaign to portray Albertans as victims also risks emboldening a growing number of extremist elements hijacking “yellow vest” protests.

Alberta government spin doctors apparently decided on a simplistic strategy of framing any opposition to Trans Mountain as “B.C. against Canada.”

The behind-the-scenes brain trust also arrived at two other Orwellian platitudes: “It’s senseless to pit the environment against the economy,” and, “This is a good thing” — a slogan that might be dreamed up if Martha Stewart worked for Burson-Marsteller.

It’s not often that the roof is lifted off the sausage-making factory to reveal the political abattoir in operation. Such as they are, the arguments advanced in the national misinformation onslaught include such untruths as mythicalAsian markets, how expanding exports of unprocessed bitumen are somehow good for meeting our climate goals, and the biggest nose-stretcher of all: how much the absence of a pipeline is costing Canadians. Alberta first claimed it was losing $4 million a day in revenue. That became $40 million a day for all Canadians. Wait! Now it’s $80 million. Isn’t all mathematics really just a matter of opinion?

Government-funded ad campaigns are conveniently unencumbered by the same standards of advertising accuracy required by the private sector — a loophole used to great effect by the authors behind this effort.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Alberta Has Spent $23 Million Calling BC an Enemy of Canada

January 17, 2019

Alberta Has Spent $23 Million Calling BC an Enemy of Canada

Tyee FOI reveals pro-pipeline PR strategy, spiraling costs.

Billboard on a Kelowna roadway, paid for by Albertans as part of a national campaign with the underlying theme: ‘This is not B.C. vs. Alberta, this is B.C. vs. Canada.’ Source: KeepCanadaWorking website.

The Alberta government has spent more than $23 million — twice as much as previously revealed — in a campaign designed to turn the rest of Canada against B.C., The Tyee has learned.

The “KeepCanadaWorking” ad and PR campaign’s top “principle” states, “This is not B.C. vs. Alberta, this is B.C. vs. Canada,” according to documents obtained under a Freedom of Information request.

The documents show how an “ethnic campaign” targeted residents of the Lower Mainland, Toronto suburbs and Ottawa who speak “Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Filipino, Punjabi.”

Work first began in January, 2018 to create the campaign that promotes expanding the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, which would triple the volume of Alberta bitumen sent through the port of Vancouver.

As recently as Nov. 14, 2018, Rachel Notley’s Alberta NDP government stated it had spent $10 million on the campaign.

On Jan. 7, 2019, the Alberta government told The Tyee the amount had reached $23,040,463.90.

The province’s self-described “full-service” public relations arm, the Communications and Public Engagement (CPE) department, named that figure in an email responding to Freedom of Information requests filed by The Tyee.

In the past two months, Alberta has dumped more than $13 million into its pro-pipeline public relations push, a provincial government spokesperson confirmed to The Tyee.

What did $23 million in taxpayer money buy?

Internal Alberta government documents obtained by The Tyee reveal the top “principle” of the so-called “KeepCanadaWorking” campaign: “This is not B.C. vs. Alberta, this is B.C. vs. Canada.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oil’s Wild Price Swings Set to Create Global Chaos

January 10, 2019

Oil’s Wild Price Swings Set to Create Global Chaos

Volatility is here to stay — and the political and economic implications will touch us all.

Oil once gushed from the ground for drillers, like these workers in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1901. Now costly fracking and oilsands mining produces lower-quality oil at far higher costs. Photo: US Library of Congress.

As the current global oil glut shakes up petro states around the world, oil prices are becoming more volatile than Donald Trump tweets.

Neither Canada, now the dumb owner of a marginal 65-year-old pipeline, nor Alberta, a key exporter of bitumen, a cheap refinery feedstock, has paid much attention to this revolution.

As a consequence Canada has no strategy to deal with the new normal of highly volatile oil prices.

Government incompetence explains the hew and cry in Alberta about its overproduction crisis and the various proposals to solve it, ranging from the purchase of rail cars (a bad idea) to the decision to order companies to cut production of heavy oil by about 325,000 barrels a day (a sensible idea).

Alberta’s panic attack is based on the idea that bitumen from the province’s oilsands producers is selling at a discount because of a lack of pipeline capacity.

The reality is that the dramatic 30-per-cent drop in oil prices since the beginning of October, from more than US$70 to US$50, is upsetting oil exporters, producers and markets around the world.

Different kinds of oil fetch different prices, based on their quality and transportation costs. And all are experiencing dramatic price drops. Alberta’s bitumen, a cheap refinery feedstock, is not the only crude languishing during a global market glut.

Refineries in Japan and Korea, for example, scooped up cheap U.S. oil earlier this year.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Alberta’s Problem Isn’t Pipelines; It’s Bad Policy Decisions

December 5, 2018

Alberta’s Problem Isn’t Pipelines; It’s Bad Policy Decisions

Bitumen prices are low because the province has ignored at least a decade of warnings.

Rachel Notley in front of an oil rig — In 2007, an Alberta government warned that bitumen prices could eventually fall so low that the government’s royalty revenues — critical for its budget — would be at risk. Photo via Government of Alberta.

The Alberta government has known for more than a decade that its oilsands policies were setting the stage for today’s price crisis.

Which makes it hard to take the current government seriously when it tries to blame everyone from environmentalists to other provinces for what is a self-inflicted economic problem.

In 2007, a government report warned that prices for oilsands bitumen could eventually fall so low that the government’s royalty revenues — critical for its budget — would be at risk.

The province should encourage companies to add value to the bitumen by upgrading and refining it into gasoline or diesel to avoid the coming price plunge, the report said.

Instead, the government has kept royalties — the amount the public gets for the resource — low and encouraged rapid oilsands development, producing a market glut.

With North American pipelines largely full, U.S. oil production surging and U.S. refineries working at full capacity, Alberta has wounded itself with bad policy choices, say experts.

The Alberta government and oil industry is in crisis mode because the gap between the price paid for Western Canadian Select — a blend of heavy oil and diluent — and benchmark West Texas Intermediate oils has widened to $40 US a barrel.

Some energy companies have called on the government to impose production cuts to increase prices.

The business case for slowing bitumen production was made by the great Fort McMurray fire of 2015.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tree Teachings: How Forests and Wildfires Are Critically Linked

November 4, 2018

Tree Teachings: How Forests and Wildfires Are Critically Linked

First in a series about the work of famed botanist .

Diana Beresford-Kroeger: The global forest ‘forecasts our future in every breath it takes.’

I have called up Diana Beresford-Kroeger, the famed Irish botanist and bestselling author, to ask about the megafires that carpeted much of North America in dense smoke last summer.

In British Columbia alone, wildfires released between 150 and 200 megatonnes of carbon dioxide in 2017. That’s more than twice the volume created by human activities in the province.

Beresford-Kroeger, who calls herself a renegade scientist, has been studying forests all her life and is one of the world’s leading experts on the many medicinal properties of trees.

Coming from a strong Celtic tradition, the 74-year-old plain speaker delivers a good dose of traditional knowledge with her science, combining data with old-fashioned wisdom.

The global forest, which keeps the atmosphere rich in oxygen and low in carbon dioxide, “forecasts our future in every breath it takes and every seed it releases into the leaf mold of the forest floor,” she has written.

On the day when I reach her to discuss the megafires that consumed parts of California, Chile, Sweden and B.C. last summer, she says she has both good and terrifying news.

But first Beresford-Kroeger tells me she has just walked into her house just south of Ottawa from her research garden, where native and endangered trees thrive, and is covered in mud.

“You should know,” she begins with a laugh, “that you are talking to a dirty woman.”

And then she plunges into the subject of wildfires, which burned almost 3.4 million hectares of forest last year across Canada — a nearly threefold increase over 2016.

Fires foretold

The first point Beresford-Kroeger wants to make is that the fires consuming places like California and B.C.’s Interior were foretold by Indigenous people thousands of years ago.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Can New Energy Technologies Save the Planet? Ask the Sperm Whale

September 28, 2018

Can New Energy Technologies Save the Planet? Ask the Sperm Whale

The history of North American whale killing reveals the lie that clean power will save us.

No one should be more skeptical of superlatives about renewable energy than the sperm whale. Photo by Shane Gross, Shutterstock.

An oilman, a green techie and a sperm whale walked into a bar.

They got to drinking and, inevitably, boasting.

The oilman looked at the whale and declared that if it hadn’t been for fossil fuels, all 75 species of whales would have been hunted to extinction for oil.

“My industry and its technology saved your large ass.”

The greenie then chipped in and said saving the whales was tiddlywinks.

“You oil guys might have saved a few whales, but low-carbon technologies are going to save the whole damn planet. Including oilmen.”

At that point the sperm whale put down his whiskey and harrumphed.

“Idiots. Oil accelerated the killing of whales, and green tech isn’t likely going to save the planet. You two knuckleheads know nothing about energy or unintended consequences.”

And therein lies a modern energy parable.

People generally assume that when markets run out of one resource or, in the case of whales, exterminate several species, then civilization will find a new resource that replaces the old one — the way renewables are supposed to retire fossil fuels. Right?

But the history of whale killing tells a much more complex and nuanced story, writes U.S. sociologist Richard York in an intriguing 2017 essay titled “Why Petroleum Did Not Save the Whales.”

Oilmen, of course, like to think the 1859 Pennsylvania oil boom, which poured kerosene into the North American marketplace, slackened the demand for whale oil as a source of illumination.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Petro Politics and Trudeau’s Sordid Pipeline Deal

September 8, 2018

Petro Politics and Trudeau’s Sordid Pipeline Deal

Behind the spin, the reality is clear — taxpayers and the environment lose in the pipeline debacle.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are ignoring the law, economics and the environment in backing the Trans Mountain pipeline. Photo from trumpvstrudeau, Creative Commons licensed.

“Petroleum is unique among the world’s resources; it is more likely to be associated with conflict than any other commodity.” — Terry Lynn Karl

The debate about the Federal Court of Appeal decision that killed the approval for the Trans Mountain $7.4-billion pipeline expansion speaks volumes about the oily state of Canadian politics.

The leaders of Canada’s die-hard petro republics, Alberta’s Rachel Notley and Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe, predictably chaffed and frothed.

They complained that they had been let down, billions of dollars are being lost and Parliament must address “this crisis.”

Business types lamented that the courts had dealt another blow to Canada’s mining republic reputation by slowing down another noble megaproject promising jobs and prosperity — for China no less.

The power of oil to construct narratives that bear little or no relation to the truth is a global phenomenon and, in Canada, a new boreal specialty. You can’t find a more entitled political player than a petroleum exporter.

All in all, the media and Canadian politicians reduced the court decision to a dubious concession to pesky First Nations and environmentalists and another damned hurdle for “the national interest” and the pursuit of jobs.

But that’s not the truth or the reality.

Here are some of the important issues that concerned citizens should now be contemplating in the wake of the historic decision.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Nine Uncomfortable Canadian Energy Facts

May 9, 2018

Nine Uncomfortable Canadian Energy Facts

We’re not cutting emissions as much as we should, and we’re dependent on an increasingly expensive source of oil.

Canada’s energy twilight: Canada can’t meet emission targets and expand bitumen or shale gas production at the same time, according to energy expert David Hughes. Photo by Jeff Peischl/NOAA.

Canadians are global energy pigs; we’re high emitters of carbon and certainly aren’t leaders in renewable energy.

In addition “aspirational” plans by Canadian politicians won’t deliver promised emission reductions on climate change without major reductions in energy consumption.

These are just some of the hard energy facts contained in Canada’s Energy Outlook, a new and encyclopedic report by David Hughes, one of Canada’s foremost energy experts.

Hughes, whose reliable research is cited by the likes of Bloomberg, Nature, The Economist and The Tyee, has been analyzing energy trends for industry and government for more than 30 years.

Unlike many environmentalists, Hughes does not believe that a transition to renewables or even reductions in greenhouse gases will be seamless, easy or cheap. Here’s why:

1) Canadians live high and large on largely fossil fuel-based energy.

On a per capita basis we consume energy at more than five times the world average. We even consume more energy than oil hungry Americans and twice as much as the average citizen in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Citizens in Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Japan, nations that don’t export oil, consume energy at less than half the rate of Canadians.

Canada consumed 2.5 per cent of the world’s energy in 2016, and that consumption has increased at .13 per cent per year over the past five years. Fossil fuels, of course, dominated Canada’s energy menu: oil and gas at 57 per cent; coal at five per cent; nuclear at seven per cent; hydroelectricity at 27 per cent and solar and wind at 3.1 per cent.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Spooked by Quakes, Oklahoma Toughens Fracking Rules

March 9, 2018

Spooked by Quakes, Oklahoma Toughens Fracking Rules

Canadian regulators stick with less stringent regulations despite growing risks from mega-fracking.

Across North America, fracking-caused earthquakes have led to public concern and protests. Photo by ProgressOhio, Creative Commons licensed.

After swarms of earthquakes caused by hydraulic fracturing, Oklahoma has introduced tougher regulations than those used by any Canadian energy regulator.

Last month the Oklahoma Corporation Commission ordered all drillers to deploy seismic arrays to detect ground motion within five kilometres of hydraulic fracturing operations over a 39,000-square-kilometre area in the centre of the state.

The commission, which regulates the industry, also lowered the minimum level of earthquakes at which operators must change practices from the current 2.5 magnitude to 2.

In addition, frackers must suspend their operations immediately for up to six hours after causing a 2.5 magnitude earthquake which can be felt at the surface.

The commission created the new earthquake protocol after hydraulic fracturing operations set off more than 70 earthquakes of at least 2.5 magnitude since 2016.

Canada’s energy regulators only make companies stop operations if they cause a magnitude 4 earthquake.

The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), for example, doesn’t shut down an operation until it causes a magnitude 4 event. Even then the halt is temporary.

British Columbia’s Oil and Gas Commission requires operators “to immediately report” seismic events greater than magnitude 4 or unusual ground motion experienced by people within three kilometres of their operations.

In an attempt to reduce seismic activity, once thought to be solely caused by waste water injection, Oklahoma shut down wells and ordered the reduction of fluid volumes in 700 waste water disposal wells by 800,000 barrels per day between 2014 and 2015.

They also stipulated that if a waste water injection site triggered a 3.5 magnitude quake, it had to shut down operations.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Megadams Not Clean or Green, Says Expert

February 1, 2018

Megadams Not Clean or Green, Says Expert

Forty years of research show hydro dams create environmental damage, says David Schindler.

‘When you add the emissions from building and producing materials for a dam, as well as the emissions from clearing forests and moving earth, the greenhouse gas production from hydro is expected to be about the same as from burning natural gas,’ says professor David Schindler. Photo from BC Hydro.

Politicians who describe dams as “clean energy projects” are talking “nonsense” and rejecting decades of science, says David Schindler, a leading water ecologist.

Former premier Christy Clark often touted the Site C dam as a “clean energy project” and Premier John Horgan has adopted the same term.

But that’s not the story told by science, Schindler told The Tyee in a wide-ranging interview.

In fact studies done by federal scientists identified dams as technological giants with lasting ecological footprints almost 40 years ago, he said.

Dam construction and the resulting flooding produces significant volumes of greenhouse gas emissions. Canadian dams have strangled river systems, flooded forests, blocked fish movement, increased methylmercury pollution, unsettled entire communities and repeatedly violated treaty rights.

Schindler, a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta and an internationally honoured expert on lakes and rivers, pointed to the increased mercury levels as a health and environmental risk. “All reservoirs that have been studied have had mercury in fish increase several-fold after a river is dammed,” he said.

“How can any of those impacts be regarded as green or clean?”

The Site C dam is no exception. A report by the University of British Columbia’s Program on Water Governance found the Site C project, which faced a federal-provincial Joint Review Panel in 2014, “has more significant negative environmental effects than any other project ever reviewed under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (including oilsands projects).”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Dam(n) Big Fracking Problem

December 23, 2017

A Dam(n) Big Fracking Problem

Regulators left behind as industry built dozens of unauthorized dams — many at risk of failure.

The province’s Environmental Assessment Office has ordered Progress Energy to drain almost all water from this seven-storey dam, built without required approvals. The company is now seeking a retroactive exemption from the assessment process. Photo by Ben Parfitt.

More than half of 48 dams that oil and gas companies built in recent years without first obtaining the proper permits had serious structural problems that could have caused many to fail.

And now, the BC Oil and Gas Commission, which appeared to be asleep at the switch in allowing the unlicensed dams to be built in the first place, is frantically trying to figure out what to do about them after the fact.

Information about the unprecedented, unregulated dam-building spree is contained in a raft of documents that the commission released in response to freedom of information requests filed by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The documents obtained by the CCPA, along with other materials recently posted on the OGC’s website, reveal that 28 of at least 48 unlicensed dams on Crown (meaning public) lands had significant structural flaws or other problems belatedly identified by commission staff.

All the dams were built to trap fresh water used by energy companies drilling and fracking for gas in northeast B.C. In some fracking operations in the region, companies are pressure-pumping the equivalent of 64 Olympic-size swimming pools of water underground to break open gas-bearing rock formations, triggering earthquakes in the process.

The OGC paved the way for the construction of the dams by granting companies numerous permits under the Land Act to use public lands to “store water.”

But in approving the applications, commission personnel failed to ask basic, critical questions: How did companies intend to store the water? In tanks? In pits? Behind dams?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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