Oil Sands Truth: Shut Down the Tar Sands

Somebody local with a grudge targeting oilpatch?

Somebody local with a grudge targeting oilpatch?
Stephen Hume
Vancouver Sun
Monday, October 20, 2008

News of a second pipeline bombing in British Columbia's Peace River district splashed across headlines from New York to New Zealand.

Almost as quickly, anxious residents of Tomslake, about 700 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, speculated about al-Qaida, first nations militants and eco-extremists.

In these hypersensitive days when IED (improvised explosive device) is coffee-break vocabulary, news that the RCMP's anti-terrorist unit had taken over the investigation was a sure media trigger.

But Andrew Nikiforuk, the Calgary-based writer who made an exhaustive award-winning study of Albertans' conflicted relationship with the oil and gas industry, was quoted by Reuters as saying that he wouldn't describe the events as "eco-terrorism."

More likely somebody local with a grudge, he mused. That's how the last round of oilpatch violence from 1995 to 1998 turned out. Wiebo Ludwig, an Alberta farmer who said his family and livestock were harmed by gas emissions, went to jail.

And recently, local farmers and first nations in the Peace River have all protested against petroleum development, citing similar concerns to those expressed by Ludwig.

So history and circumstance -- the attempts to damage remote installations owned by EnCana were pretty inept-- make Nikiforuk's theory more plausible than hasty conclusions about a campaign by some sinister ideological underground.

However, the dramatic events of the last few days do point to underlying factors that should cause everybody to take notice.

First, these thankfully clumsy attacks demonstrate that Canada's oil and gas infrastructure is extraordinarily vulnerable and, by extension, so are citizens who live in proximity to well-heads, pipelines or gas plants.

Second, despite governments' enthusiastic support for the oil and gas sector -- it generates billions in annual cash flow -- disquiet among citizens regarding the industry's impact upon themselves, their families and their communities is far from isolated.

Complaints about infringements on property rights, elevated health risks and public safety have simmered in oil patch communities for almost 50 years. These fears endure despite scientific research, stringent safety regulations and intensive publicity campaigns intended to reassure. They are characterized by a visceral mistrust of authorities perceived to be in bed with industry.

For the most part, concerns are advanced not by environmental extremists but by the mainstream -- ranchers, suburban property owners, parents and school teachers, municipal politicians and elected Indian band councils.

Complaints at Pincher Creek in southern Alberta date from the 1960s.

In Turner Valley, Alta., where Western Canada's oil age began 86 years ago, residents petitioned the auditor-general of Canada over health and environmental worries associated with a gas plant there as recently as 2005. Just two weeks ago, an Alberta school board asked government to end plans to drill wells surrounding a rural elementary school.

Much concern revolves around sour gas exposure, either from catastrophic drilling accidents, pipeline ruptures or the practice of "flaring" or burning off surplus gas.

For natural gas to be defined as "sour" rather than "sweet," it has to contain one per cent or more hydrogen sulphide, a toxic compound so lethal that in concentrations as small as 250 parts per million, deaths can occur in minutes. Concentrations in the wells that caused the recent uproar among Alberta parents, teachers and school trustees are 160,000 ppm.

About 30 per cent of Western Canada's natural gas is sour and it travels through a pipeline network so extensive that if laid end to end, it would reach the moon. Yet industry has a long history of accidents.

Sour gas blowouts have bracketed Alberta's provincial capital. The downwind plume of one in 1982 carried hydrogen sulphide as far as Winnipeg. In 1979, a gas pipeline rupture forced evacuation of a whole Edmonton suburb of 18,000. A sour gas pipeline failed near Pincher Creek in 2007, forcing an evacuation. A well blowout in 2004 created a massive crater and spewed gas for 30 days. The most recent blowout was contained southeast of Calgary on Oct. 3.

shume@islandnet.com

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=47b5b232-81b6-4ee0...

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