Scorched earth politics.

The liberals will leave the NDP nothing on which to build BC's economy. That is their plan. As long as their friends make fortunes at taxpayers expense. They have become no better than criminals.

Fracking water

This article implies that gas compnies are not being charged for the water they are using. BC Hydro has to pay a fee for the water it uses to generate electricity.

BC Hydro is buying very expensive electricity from Idependent Power Producers to ensure it has power when we have a dry year and we are allowing someone an assured supply of water from a BC Hydro reservoir. What is missing from this scenario?

Why am I reading about this secret giveaway at a blog site, not in the Vancouver Sun or Province?

NDP and fracking

What is the NDP's stand on fracking?

It is about time that Adrian Dix supported Bob Simpson and Vicki Huntington.

Dix cannot it on the wall on the fracking issue any longer.

Not Just a Fracking Issue

Apparently BC is sufficiently in need to water storage for future hydro electric production that it is considering a third dam (Site C) on the magnificent Peace River. Planning to flood high grade farm land and cover one of the most beautiful river valleys in the province. This, of course, is the same river that the government is now granting licenses to extract water from existing reservoirs....

This is 'development' gone wild. We lived in the Peace River area for more than five years. It is a provincial natural treasure mostly ignored by the general population. And mostly just seen as an area for resource exploitation by the BC Government.

They clearly understand they

They clearly understand they have lost the confidence of the electorate and will be terminated in the next election.
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Yet last two polls show otherwise. Not to mention no one I talk to knows about or cares about this. Until the 6 pm news talks about this, people will remain in the dark.(and they won't due to media ass kissing BC Liberals) But Canadians are also to lazy to look things up for themselves.

When the election comes the so called mainstream media will bring up all sorts of Glen Clark/Dix controversies and the sheeple will lap it up as the BC media will not say one bad word towards Lieberals.

The thing is unless the cons can gain support and split the vote to allow NDP to win we are stuck with the Socreds/BC Reform/Cons/ BC libs sad but true.

Sorry but BC is screwed for generations...

Planning to flood high grade

Planning to flood high grade farm land and cover one of the most beautiful river valleys in the province. This, of course, is the same river that the government is now granting licenses to extract water from existing reservoirs....
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Yet the sheep in the Peace Region will continue without question continue to elect their BC Liberal mla's whether a human is running or a moose. They will not even send a message to Victoria...

Of course, this is all part

Of course, this is all part of the fraudulent GDP racket, where everything goes on, nothing comes off.

As long as the phony GDP figures go up we have "growth" and the public can be led by the nose by the politicians and so called "economists".

Ed Deak.

Sleight of hand

Many single water withdrawals just below the limit required for environmental assessments are nothing more than ways to avoid public clarification and possible rejection of corporate plans to extract resources for their own profits.

We saw this type of environmental assessment system fragmented to include only a particular segment of a project without looking at the bigger picture involving several such projects. This is not new and has been used frequently in the Tar Sands and elsewhere. Big fossil fuel corporations, who lobbied hard to shape the rules, well know how to play those same rules of this regulatory game to their own advantage.

Aside from the groundwater contamination of "fracking", a very serous issue that is clearly being publicly omitted and obfuscated by oil and gas corporations and their government lap dogs, the public, first nations and local municipalities or not, also need to know more about the area geology and hydrology, such as the yearly and seasonal recharge rates of Williston Lake/reservoir, as well as projections to 2031, given effects of climate change. That water may become very precious to the region, as well as to hydro electric production for the province, not just gas export. How much do they pay for this water that will be unusable or worse after they are done with it, or do they get it for free?

Given the non-transparency of these dealings, is cite C Hydro also a side show as a water source for oil and gas extraction and export?

climate change

Just like pumping all the water out of the ground lead to global warming. Water stores much more heat than CO2. Putting it all back will lead to other unforeseen problems. especially, since it will be nonrecoverable. 75% of the planet is water. Screwing up the balance of distribution will severely alter the climate.

Does corporate history matter?

Another serious point of contention has to do with corporate history. Is this the same Talisman energy corporation that operated in south central Sudan some years ago.

That Calgary based Talisman company, ostensibly to prevent disruption of their oil extraction and shipping, allowed President El Basheer's (spelling?) Sudanese government warplanes/helicopters to use Talisman airfields to refuel and then strafe and bomb villages and settlements surrounding the oil fields (compliance anyone?) until the area was a human wasteland. Ethnic cleansing, maybe (northern Muslims vs. southern Christians and Animists), war crimes and crimes against humanity, surely; so many innocent civilians died, were seriously injured, orphaned or became displaced as their meagre homes were destroyed (very similar to Darfur).

Canadian Christian groups, amongst others, tried to intervene (funny how this story was barely covered by the mainstream media) with some success, although the Talisman board first tried the excuse that if they pulled out, then the Chinese would simply replace them.

Talisman did pull out and the Chinese did move in, but the violence, for the most part, died down. Today there is much more cooperation between the former warring factions, and the new country of South Sudan is a fact. Had Talisman stayed, I'm not sure this could have happened.

If this is the same Talisman energy corporation, then you know that they don't give a damn about B.C. or its inhabitants, so long as they make profits for themselves and maybe their shareholders.

If the same, that CEO and his board members should be docked at the International Court in the Hague, not making deals in cahoots with a non democratic arm of the current B.C. government.

And truly democratic governments cannot say that they consult with all the stakeholders and then go ahead with plans already made prior to such consultations.

Corporations that deal in death and destruction need International and Canadian laws that take away their right to exist, disband them and return their profits to those affected as compensation, just for starters. It might restrain corporations from their worst excesses.

Funny how Harper's Canadian Federal immigration would like to punish individual war criminals through deportation, but are completely "hands off" the corporate world for committing those same crimes, to the point of continuing to deal with them as if nothing happened.

If that is the same Calgary company, they shouldn't be even slightly involved in this questionable and undemocratic approval process.

Democracy is Dead iin Canada

... and it won't be until the people seriously wake up to this FACT that even the hope of change can be pursued in earnestness.

The beast of politics and corporate rule has been unleashed. There is nothing we the people can do about its appetite short of slaying this beast. Until then, we cannot have a massive transformation of state in favour of the people by clinging to false hopes about voting in another party or a different leader.

Are we prepared to take back our country and literally remove these white-collared bandits from the scene, or are we going to continue to endure their abuses inflicted unconscionably on us all in pursuit of satiating their own lust of power?

A massive social uprising is the only way we are going to succeed in making a paradigm shift from the few to the many. Why are we so incapable of seeing this fact? Has history taught us nothing at all? Or do we need to slay Marx once again in order to feel free??

It's All About Compromise and Trade-Offs

NE BC shale/tight gas plays will see around $100 billion in investment by the end of this decade.

By the end of this decade, BC will become Canada's largest producer of natural gas according to the Canadian Energy Research Institute.

Natural gas royalty revenue is what made the Albertan treasury wealthy (not oil royalties) - No PST, best infrastructure in country, no debt, the Alberta Heritage Fund for starters.

Most people on here complain about the HST, taxes, not enough funding for health, education, social services... ferry rates too high, transit fares too high, not enough rapid transit, more schools, higher salaries for gov't workers, teachers, etc., etc. etc.

Well, toward the end of this decade the NE BC shale/tight gas will be in full production resulting in cash-flow to the BC treasury that would take care of much of the aforementioned.

Life is all about trade-offs and compromise and, in this instance, the benefits far out-weigh the costs IMHO.

So Talisman has a water license to withdraw water from the Williston Reservoir. Not for 1%, not for .1% but a miniscule .01% of the annual flow through the WAC Bennett Dam.

And Talisman will be recycling close to 100% of the water utilized in fracs. IOW, following a frac, the water returns to the surface where Talisman captures it for recycling and re-use in their Montney Basin operations.

Apache and Encana obtain 90% of its frac water from deep underground, sub-surface reservoirs, which are saline and naturally contaminated, and which in turn is drawn to the surface and turned into potable water via the Debolt Water Treatment Plant.

And that's in the Horn River Basin much farther north.

Politically, it's interesting to note that the only politicians questioning fraccing are independents Simpson and Huntington. Not the BC NDP. Because it's apparent that the BC NDP is aware of the riches that will eventually flow into BC coffers later this decade.

people in bc

people in bc gave up voting for a premier long ago.. it doesnt matter who you vote for, they all end up getting caught and all they have to do is retire.. lie steal cheat set up all your so called supporters with cushy deals and then .. just say.. oh im retiring wheres my multi million dollar pension..thats why nobody cares or votes anymore..jmho

Stephen Cooley

"This article implies that gas compnies are not being charged for the water they are using.... Why am I reading about this secret giveaway at a blog site, not in the Vancouver Sun or Province?"

You would have read about it last July (2010) in the Vancouver Sun when a large protest by local ranchers was covered after they were prohibited from taking water during the drought, while Talisman was being serviced by up to 200 water tankers making withdrawals from the lakes that the ranchers were prohibited from. Cattle thirst while gas wells get fraced.

The link's here:
http://www.vancouversun.com/Drought+puts+industry+practices+under+microscope/3316502/story.html#ixzz0wSREU7a1
but it doesn't work. Take that as a conspiracy if you like...

Ho Hum...so the crimes against us go on...an on...

And we sit around like a bunch of dumb clucks.

The Liberal Dictatorship of British Columbia

The Liberal Dictatorship of British Columbia does not care about our opinions. Most of the people of BC are not aware of this. The Vancouver Sun and Province are so on board with the government it is a joke. The Government justifies everything they do by saying they are creating jobs. Granted, a few of the jobs go to locals and the head offices of the oil/gas companies love to promise they will hire locally, but in reality the majority of the jobs go to out of province workers. My point is:
1. Don't give away our water.
2. If the government is justifying this giveaway by saying they are creating jobs, then they are sadly mistaken.

John Horgan NDP energy critic

"I believe the best place for us to be on natural gas is to get to a market where we can get a better return, and that's where the LNG proposal we talked about earlier comes into play," said Horgan, discouraging any notion that an NDP government, with him as energy minister, would be prepared to sacrifice the steady flow of natural gas revenues to environmental concerns.

"The risk to our coastline from LNG is insignificant; the benefit to British Columbians is quite significant. And it's our resource, so we'll get the royalties for extracting it, we'll get value added by getting it to an LNG facility, and then we'll get a better price for it in Asia."

http://www.canada.com/story_print.html?id=57b2bdc1-8ed7-46b1-b0a4-1d1bdd40d120&sponsor=

No one is minding the store, Cool Hand

Tiny little Debolt, Alberta is hardly the heart of the oil patch. I'm not even sure your figures are correct on that. The rest of the oil/gas industry uses water that would have gone back into the environment. Once it is used it is contaminated and out of nature's cycle FOREVER. For the most part the industry is allowed to self regulate and help themselves to whatever they want be it water or farmland.

It's all about compromise and tradeoffs?

Hard to know where to begin in response, "Cool Hand". You deliberately spend most of your post outlining the economic benefits of an expanded shale gas industry in northeast BC but absolutely no time addressing the central point of my piece, which is the provincial government's shoddy handling of one particularly contentious industrial water-use application, and what that may portend as dozens upon dozens of other such applications wind their way through provincial regulatory reviews that members of the public have not a clue about.

So let me ask you:

Do you believe that members of the public should be consulted on major water-use applications?

Do you believe that when a senior provincial cabinet minister promises a process of "extensive" public consultation that the public should expect him to live up to his word?

Do you believe that when it comes to management of public water resources - resources which are vital to maintaining both a healthy environment and healthy economy - that basic information on who has rights of access to water resources, how much water they actually use, and how any resulting contaminated wastewater is disposed of should be readily available to the public?

Finally, you revert once again in your comments to boasting about natural gas industry water innovations and in that regard mention Talisman's water recycling and Encana's use of highly saline water from a deep aquifer as examples of progressive developments. I agree with you that efforts to minimize freshwater use are important and should be encouraged. However, you neatly sidestep - yet again - a certain inconvenient truth, namely the ongoing ramp-up in energy industry water applications, and the industry's ever increasing freshwater use, including by Talisman.

So let me close with one final question, on an issue raised by Stephen Cooley elsewhere in comments in response to my article.

Do you believe that something more than a token price should be placed on industrial water use (currently fracking operators pay under $3 for each Olympic swimming pool's worth of water extracted under a water licence and zero cents for any water extracted under short-term water permit issued by the Oil and Gas Commission) in order to encourage maximum water conservation and industry innovation?

It would be most refreshing if you provided short answers and did not stray - once again - into recitations about all the money that flows into provincial coffers from energy industry activities. I get that. So does everyone else.

Ben....The most important

Ben....The most important question is, where the present criminal economic theory is leading the world ?

I've lived in 4 countries under every known ideology , have 3 citizenships, wounded WW2 vet, 45 years of papertrail proving my fight against communism with all weapons I could find.

Yet, I've never seen, or could imagine in my younger days, 56 years in Canada, the crime wave, the destruction of humanity and ecology, going on today by the presently ruling economic theory, taught in our universities as a "science", without the accounting of debits and liabilities to satisfy the colonization demands of imaginary capital, created from the air, to be used as a weapon.

The sale of resources is not an income, but the sale of capital, warned against in every rational business system and practice.

Yet, that is all our governments are doing to jack up the fraudulent GDP figures, nobody dares to question.

It can be proven very easily that "foreign investment" brings nothing to a country. It is an unaccounted foreign debt, inflating the recipient country's money supply, like the real estate prices in Vancouver, without any benefits.

When you have resources, you have capital.

Also, the products imported from China and under other fraudulent "free trade" treaties are not "cheaper", but more expensive, we're paying for with poverty, homelessness, unemployment and the sale of the country from under our feet to pay for junk that fills our garbage dumps, we never had before.

How about some of you writers looking into the causes, instead of only complaining about the results ?

Ed Deak.

Ben - Part I

I take it, from your perspective, that you view water as a resource, it's a precious commodity, and that any private use of same should require resource rents payable to gov't in the public interest.

I also take it that you view any utilization of water resources for fraccing should also require stakeholder consultation. Fair enough.

Firstly, I take a much broader picture in terms of the public interest. These companies have paid $billions$ in land leases/drilling rights over the past few years in the Montney and Horn River basins. Those basins are essentially tight gas/shale formations, which require fraccing and, in turn, water utilization.

Those $billions$ likely wouldn't have been paid into public coffers without the expectation that water supply wouldn't be available.

Since the cost of fraccing now is at or below the break-even point for natural gas priced at ~$4 MMBtu, it stands to reason that charging for water supply could hinder or curtail natural gas development in these important basins. Encana's fraccing operations are essentially "break-even" and they are the lowest cost operator in the region.

The Horn River basin is mostly a "dry" gas basin while the Montney basin contains quite a bit of "wet" gas. IOW, the wet gas contains natural gas fluids (priced at a barrel of oil), which makes exploration/production much more economical. It's no wonder that BC's monthly land lease/drilling rights sales have dried up. OTOH, Alberta is currently reaping $billions$ in land sales in its Duvernay shale region because it is very liquid gas rich.

Ben - Part Deux

Back to BC. The Talisman water license from Williston Lake will barely cause a ripple on its surface in terms of take. The same Williston Lake that people complained about, back in the day, because it would cause climatic change in the region and they were opposed to its creation. Funny that.

As for public/stakeholder consultation, I'm always leary of same due to the fact that they draw special interests, people with their own agendas, political agendas, NIMBY's etc. which sometimes makes these things a farce. Just look at many public comments on the EAO website. I've seen it first hand. OTOH, technical or mitigation measures from a few in the public is also beneficial. But they are few and far between.

In that vein, your own use of the phrase "Olympic swimming pools" seems to elicit an emotional response - not a logical, rational or reasonable response.

I do agree with you, however, that encouraging maximum water conservation and industry innovation is in the public interest. That's why I brought up the Debolt Water Treatment Plant in the Fort Nelson region of the Horn River basin. VERY INNOVATIVE. That was a result of Geoscience BC working in tandem with the industry to compile all available information about subsurface water in the area and produce a water resource map for the basin.

For that matter, Talisman will be recycling the water from the Williston reservoir after frac operations. A huge environmental services industry has also been created to deal with water recycling/contaminant removal in the Horn River/Montney basins.

BTW, I have always believed in the "carrot" approach v. the "stick" approach as it is more productive. In that vein, further "environment" tax credits dealing with water useage in the region just might be one answer to change toward the Encana and Apache "Dubolt" approach.

My further two cents.

PS. Jacksonupnorth - Debolt, Alberta has nothing to do with the Debolt Water Treatment Plant in the Fort Nelson region. Debolt up there is in reference to the deep, sub-surface saline Debolt aquifer.

Cool Hand Ol' Sport

How many times have we heard these words over the years?
And, were it true, we should be living in paradise as we speak - without a care in the world about funding for infrastructure, for healthcare, for education, income and retirement security, poverty relief, environmental degradation, and a whole host of others.

Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss in every way.If this is how Chrissy Clarke listens to the people and does their bidding,we're in for another term of public giveaways like we saw under her predecessor.No,consultation,no environmental study,a straight giveaway to a company involved in a very controversial issue.We are just beginning to see what we knew we were going to see.That the rush to run of the river power is an unmitigated disaster.This decision will probably one up that folly.