WHAT THE FRACK?
Northwest BC’s shale gas fields – currently being exploited via fracking
– are shaping up to be a major frontline in the global battle against
unconventional energy. As detailed inside this pamphlet, fracking causes
methane leaks, ground water contamination and earthquake risks, not to
mention the impacts of the carbon dioxide that is released when the gas
is finally burned. This exploitation on largely unceded Indigenous
territory, of ever more difficult, expensive and harmful fossil fuel
sources demonstrates the true greed, and insanity, of the present global
economic system. We have a really simple message: we need to keep
fossil fuels in the ground.
WHO ARE WE?
Rising Tide Vancouver Coast Salish Territories is a grassroots
environmental justice group committed to fighting the root causes of
climate change and the interconnected destruction of land, water and
air. We know that these pipelines can be stopped. Indigenous land
defenders continue determined resistance against incursions into their
unceded territory, there is a huge groundswell of public opinion against
BC’s fossil fuel expansions, and a space is being carved out where we
can change the course of BC’s energy future.
Living where we do, between the point of extraction and the global
market, we have the power to stop these projects and maintain the
integrity of interconnected ecological systems in this region. We are
working to build support in Vancouver for frontline community
resistance to pipelines and other resources extraction projects. Get
involved! www.risingtide604.ca www.facebook.com/RisingTide604
@risingtide604
NO PIPELINES ON UNCEDED FIRST NATIONS LAND
FRACKING IS NOT ONLY AN ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE
Our resistance must be multi-faceted, and we must be willing to reflect
as well as act. There is not one amongst us who need not examine our
own assumptions and complicities, and deepen our understanding of
how systems of oppression, built on greed and exploitation, fuel the
continuation of colonialism, cultural genocide, poverty, homophobia
and racialized and sexualized violence. Let us broaden our communities
and strengthen our connections. Let us learn from over 500 years of
Indigenous resistance to colonial violence, and as a movement take lead
from the front-line communities all over the world who will be most
severely affected by rising carbon emissions. As effective and
empowered communities, we will look to each other, support one
another, and understand that we all come with our unique struggles, in
the hopes of finding our mutual liberation.
Rising Tide recognizes and stands up against the environmental racism
rampant in the colonial state of Canada. Environmentally destructive
projects, environmental toxins and hazardous chemicals
disproportionately impact Indigenous people and people of colour in
Canada.
We are here today acting in solidarity with the indigenous land
defenders of the Madii Lii and Unist'ot'en Camps. These resistance
communities have established permanent base camps blocking all
fracking pipelines, LNG development, and other industrial activity to
ensure that those who have taken care of the land water and air for
thousands of years will be the ones continuing to do so.
Madii Lii is the unceded territory of the Wilps (House of)
Luutkudziiwus within the Gitxsan Nation. On Aug 26th 2014
Hereditary Cheifs Luutkudziiwus, Xsim Wits’iin and Noola declared
access to the Maddii Lii Terriotry permanently closed to LNG pipeline
development and other unauthorized industrial activity, and enacted the
Madii Lii Territorial Management Plan. A permanent base camp has
been built at the entrance to Madii Lii to carry out this plan.
Indigenous people and people of colour have been continuously
subjected to racist ideologies and practices since their first encounters
with colonial powers, often resulting in profound devastation to the
environment and resources people rely on for their very survival.
Environmental legislation and policies do not provide adequate
protection against deteriorating water and air quality, particularly in
communities of colour, thereby reflecting the racism existing in
Canada’s legal and political system. Institutional processes and policies
such as the Far North Act, omnibus budget bills C-45 and C-38, result
in legitimizing substandard drinking water and insufficient
environmental and health protection on reserves. As a direct result,
Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty is undermined.
Canada’s regressive immigration policies make it difficult for migrants
and asylum seekers to live with dignity and self-determination as
Canada’s polluting industries impact the entire planet through
contributing to runaway climate change, wars, occupations, and
neoliberal free trade deals which force people from their communities
of origin. Indigenous people and people of colour do not share equally
in the so-called “benefits” of state policies or corporate operations that
we are told are meant for the common good, and yet they are forced to
take on the unintended but devastating side effects that impact
the environment and can ultimately destroy people and their
communities.
Amazingly, despite not producing enough gas to claim this amount, the
BC liberals granted an additional $1.25 billion in subsidies for fracking
companies in 2014. The subsidy numbers are even higher when we
consider hidden subsides in the form of BC Hydro providing electricity
to gas operations. All ratepayers share the costs of new electricity even
if BC Hydro produces energy for gas specific operations.
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BC Hydro is planning a major upgrade to its transmission
system at a cost of $255 million, solely to supply the Montney
gas developments.
The Northwest Transmission line has a projected cost of $561
million and is being built specifically to power resource
extraction projects. BC Hydro is also planning a $1.5 to $2
billion Northeast transmission line to service shale gas
development in the Horn River basin.
Site-C dam at a cost of $8 -$10 billion is the largest tax payer
subsidized project whose overwhelming beneficiary is gas and
mining corporations. A single LNG plant can expect to receive
$125 million per year in subsidized energy from BC Hydro.
Even if proposed projects are approved, in term construction will
provide a few thousand jobs in a working population of 2.5 million and
five LNG plants would create only 2,500 long-term jobs, equivalent to
0.1% of BC’s total employment in 2011.
It is becoming clear that fracking and LNG are not the economic
opportunities they are made out to be, and when we factor in the cost
of climate change, BC faces the real possibility of actually losing
revenue because of fracking and LNG development. A recent study on
the external costs of GHG emissions put them in the range of $150 to
$500 per tonne of CO2. Based on estimates from BC’s Natural Gas
Strategy 167 Mt of CO2 into the atmosphere per year with the
conservative estimate cost of $150 per tonne equates to $25 billion per
year in externalized costs.
A higher estimate of 305 Mt for five major LNG plants at $500 per
tonne equates to external costs of $152 billion per year. To put that in
perspective, BC’s total GDP is approximately $220 billion per year.
TransCanada’s plans to build a 900km pipeline known as the Prince
Rupert Gas Terminal Transmission Project (PRGT), to carry fracked
gas from Treaty 8 Land in Northeastern BC to the purposed Pacific
Northwest LNG Terminal on Lelu island in the Skeena Estuary.
32km of this pipeline is slated to trespass Madii Lii Territory, and
approximately one half – 16km – would destroy Babine trail, the
ancestral grease trail connecting Fort Babine to Gitanmaax. The LNG
terminal is proposed to be located in the heart of the Skeena Estuary
and will heavily impact juvenile salmon. The construction and operation
of this gas pipeline and LNG terminal could spell collapse of Skeena
salmon.
The Unist'ot'en Camp (near Houston, about 350 km from Prince George) is a
resistance community whose purpose is to protect sovereign Wet'suwet'en
territory from all pipeline projects, including Enbridge's proposed Northern
Gateway tar sands pipeline and Chevron's Pacific Trails fracked gas pipeline,
for a total of up to 7 proposed pipelines.
Wet'suwet'en sovereign indigenous territory extends from Burns Lake to the
Coastal Mountains. The Wet'suwet'en people are not under treaty with the
Canadian government and their lands have never been ceded to the colonial
Canadian state. It is under the stewardship of the Wet'suwet'en people and
their descendants.
“This land is unceded and we’re still here. We’re not going anywhere.
People are showing up to the camp every day, our numbers are
growing. This war is far from being over and we’re going to win this
one. We’re going to win it decisively.” - Dini Ze Toghestiy, a Hereditary
Chief for the Likhs’amisyu Clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation and member of the
Unist’ot’en Camp
The Madii Lii and Unist'ot'en Camps stand directly in the path of
multiple devastating pipeline projects. As long as they stand, none of
these pipelines will be completed. By supporting these camps we not
only assist grassroots Indigenous land defenders as they assert their
sovereign right to their unceded traditional territories, we also help stop
the expansion of tar sands and fracked gas extraction.
www.madiilii.com
www.unistotencamp.com
WATER
ECONOMICS
Each fracking well can use up to 10 million liters of water each day it
fracks, meaning the estimates based on purposed LNG exports between
now and 2040 of approximately 38,000 new wells would require trillions
of liters of water for use in the fracking process. In addition to the
volume of water needed for the fracking process there are also grave
concerns around wastewater left over. Despite the fact that millions of
gallons of chemicals are mixed with the water in the fracking process, in
BC there are no industrial scale wastewater treatment plants to deal with
wastewater left over from the fracking process. This leaves serious
concerns around where the millions of liters of highly carcinogenic
waste will go. Will the wastewater be returned to the land either
underground or in surface ‘ponds’?
Since 2008 the global rise in fracking has led to a severe decline in price
with some analysts noting the current North American price of $3 per
million British Thermal Units (MMBtu) is two dollars less than what it
costs to operate fracking wells. Clark and Coleman’s revenue dreams
depended on prices in Asia remaining as high as $20MMBtu but now
they face a nightmare as Asian prices plummeted in 2014 to around
$10MMBtu and the market is still volatile. With these prices, former
royalty advisor to the Alberta government Jim Roy has stated "the LNG
industry in British Columbia is not viable at probable future price
differentials." The only way BC can maintain its production is to
drastically subsidize, lower taxes, and lower royalties and that is exactly
the pattern we are seeing.
BC lacks a comprehensive body to monitor and regulate water use and
protection and so we are left in the ironic situation where politicians can
claim BC’s water is safe and protected only because, as the following
pages show, the data is so insufficient it tells us nothing about
cumulative or long term impact on ground and surface water.
In a 2010 audit of groundwater management resources in BC the office
of auditor general of BC concluded that “the government is not
effectively ensuring the sustainability of the province’s groundwater
resources” and specifically found that “the ministry’s information about
groundwater is insufficient to enable it to ensure the sustainability of
the resource; groundwater is not being protected from depletion and
contamination or to ensure the viability of the ecosystems it supports;
control over access to groundwater is insufficient to sustain the
resource; and key organizations lack adequate authority to take
appropriate local responsibility.”
(Square line=BC gas production: Straight line=Royalties and Land Revenue)
Since the February 2014 Budget the BC liberals have cut both the
already inflated revenue projections from LNG and the royalty rate in
half, now at just 1.5% and at the same time, according to B.C auditor
general, have extended over 1 billion in tax credits to fracking
companies in just the past 5 years.
BC’s definition of clean energy does not incorporate the emissions from
the actual burning of gas after export or fully account for fugitive
emissions resulting from the fracking process. The amount of GHGs
arising from gas production in BC by 2020 could range from 167 to 305
million tonnes per year which equates to putting 24 to 64 million cars
on the roads of the world. Adding to those emissions, widely reported
estimates of methane leakage from fracking wells range from 3.6% to
7.9% meaning fugitive emissions from fracking in 2020 could reach as
high as 24 Mt per year. For comparison, to meet its 2020 GHG
reduction targets the entire province can release around 44 Mt of GHG.
In short, when we account for burned and fugitive emissions on the
scale of development outlined in BC’s Natural Gas Strategy the legislated
reduction in GHG emissions is likely impossible.
More damming is the 2014 Council of Canadians report commissioned
by Environment Canada “Environmental Impacts of Shale Gas
Extraction in Canada” in which 14 experts from universities across
North America came together to determine the safety of fracked gas
operations. The report found:
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EARTHQUAKES
Oklahoma Fracked Gas production increased from 90 billion cubic feet
in 2007 to 650 billion cubic feet in 2013 and with the rise of fracking
the number of earthquakes is unprecedented.
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In early 2015 fracking operations appear to have set off a chain of
earthquakes near Fox Creek, Alberta, including a record-breaking
magnitude 4.4 tremor. According to the B.C Oil and Gas commission,
B.C fracking operations triggered more than 230 ''seismic events'' in
northeastern British Columbia between Aug. 2013 and Oct. 2014.
“There is reason to believe that shale gas development poses a
risk to water resources, but the extent of that risk, and whether
substantial damage has already occurred, cannot be assessed
because of a lack of scientific data and understanding.”
“monitoring that has been done indicates that gas leakage into
aquifers and the atmosphere is frequent enough to raise
concern. Given the likely future density of gas wells, shale gas
development is expected to have a greater long term impact
than conventional oil and gas development.”
“The greatest threat to groundwater is gas leakage from
wells for which even existing best practices cannot assure
long-term prevention. …These potential impacts are not
being systematically monitored, predications remain unreliable,
and approaches for effective and consistent monitoring need to
be developed.”
“Leaky wells are known in some circumstances to create
pathways for contamination of groundwater. Conventional
methods of monitoring gas leakage may be inaccurate, and are
incomplete because leakage outside the main well casing is
rarely measured.”
"I found no cases where rigorous groundwater monitoring
has been done at any fracking pad. Exactly zero, not a
single one. Anywhere, ever," - John Cherry, chair of the
study and contaminant hydrologist professor emeritus at
Waterloo University and director of Field Focused
Groundwater Contamination Research.
MONITORING
EMISSIONS
The BC Oil and Gas Commission is the single regulatory body
overseeing gas development in BC. Initially designed to be independent
of the provincial government, in 2002 a law passed which made the
minister of energy the chair of the commission, effectively meaning the
government strongly influences the activities of the sole regulator of the
gas industry. Further, legal changes to the Water Act have led to a
situation where the BC oil and gas commission has been granted
powers to assign fracked gas companies access rights to public waters
making gas corporations the only companies in BC that do not receive approval
from provincial water stewardship officials. This means the body intended to
regulate and monitor environmental aspect of gas development is also
the only body supplying permits for gas development and operations.
In 2010 BC introduced the Clean Energy Act which mandates the
province to source at least 93 percent of its electricity from renewable
sources. However in July 2012 Deputy Premier and then Minister of
Natural Gas Development Rich Coleman announced a change to the
act which enabled natural gas to power LNG terminals and excluded
the emissions from that energy generation from the Clean Air Act. If
powered by natural gas, a single LNG plant (there are now 18
proposed) would release two million tonnes of Green House
Gases (GHGs) per year, as much as 900,000 homes in B.C. In
total, the electricity required to liquefy the proposed amount of fracked
gas in B.C. would be equivalent to powering 75% of all residences in
B.C. (David Suzuki Foundation)
From the 2014 report Environmental Impacts of Shale Gas
Extraction in Canada
In 2007 BC passed the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act, which set
legislated targets to reduce GHG emissions by 33% below 2007 levels
by 2020. However, BC’s targets do not count emissions from exports,
which is shocking because the amount of purposed BC gas burnt in
Asia would double BCs total greenhouse gas emissions. A conservative
estimate which does not account for fugitive emissions from fracking
operations would see a doubling of 2010 emissions from gas operations
by 2020 which would account for 61% of allowable 2020 emissions
targets under the above mentioned law. The rest of the province would
have to reduce emissions by approximately two-thirds of 2010 levels to
maintain the legislated commitment.
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“There are no vulnerability identification and management
systems in place to identify those areas in Canada where
hydraulic fracturing will be so risky that it should not be
undertaken.”
“Information concerning the impacts of leakage of natural gas
from poor cement seals on fresh groundwater resources is
insufficient… The nature and rate of cement deterioration are
poorly understood and there is only minimal or misleading
information available in the public domain. Research is also
lacking on methods for detecting and measuring leakage of
GHGs to the atmosphere.”
"As an expert, I know that British Columbia has invested
very little money in the type of research and monitoring
that it would need to make statements about shale gas
being safe." John Cherry, chair of study.
A report by the B.C. Auditor General on the Oil and Gas
Commission’s record of addressing contamination concluded “the
public information provided by the Oil and Gas Commission on its
oversight activities is not sufficient to allow the Legislative Assembly
and public to understand how effectively oil and gas site contamination
risks are being managed”
A report from the Tides foundation found that “without policy
leadership, LNG produced in British Columbia would emit more than
three times the carbon pollution of that produced in current world
leading operations. The finding is based not only on the emissions of
the proposed LNG plants, but on the carbon footprint of the
commodity they would produce—from wellhead to waterline.”