Topic
Beyond public scrutiny, vast amounts of BC's water are being dealt to 'fracking' operations.
Beyond public scrutiny, vast amounts of BC's water are being dealt to 'fracking' operations.
Independent MLAs call on premier to probe dangers of hydraulic fracturing in gas fields.
Find more energy reporting on The Tyee.
When the pipeline broke, Friedrich wrote, "approximately 20 cubic metres of produced water spilled onto private lands and the pipeline was shut in. Permit holders are required by law to contain and eliminate spills and remediate any land or body of water affected by the spillage."
The OGC felt the spill was serious enough that it issued a directive to Orefyn. General Order 2011-20 was issued on Sept. 29, six weeks or so after the pipeline spill, and was signed by Lance Ollenberger, the OGC's deputy commissioner of operations engineering. The order directed Orefyn to clean up the site where the cattle had been killed or sickened and to repair the pipeline. Since that time, undisclosed amounts of contaminated soil have apparently been hauled away from the property.
As for the pipeline itself, Friedrich reports that it is "inactive." But the OGC remains firm that it will not release any written materials relating to the incident, including the order.
"Unfortunately, we are not able to release any records pertaining to this order at this time. Enforcement actions are still pending, therefore, according to Section 15 of the Freedom of Information Act, information on this order cannot be released until all items have been resolved and the order is closed."
All of which is rather curious. When a truck carrying gasoline tipped over last April on the Island Highway outside of Victoria and disgorged its contents onto the road and subsequently into the adjacent Goldstream River, provincial Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Transportation officials had no qualms about speaking to the media and about disclosing what enforcement actions they were taking and that they contemplated. It mattered not one iota that the investigation was then only in its infancy.
The big difference between the Goldstream event and that outside of Fort St. John is that the former occurred on the doorstep of the provincial capital, disrupted traffic on a busy stretch of road and could not have failed to come to the public's attention, while the Orefyn pipeline spill occurred in a region of the province that is larger than all but 14 of the U.S. states south of the 49th parallel, and with a sparse population of just 60,000 or so.
But this hardly justifies withholding information. Especially in a region of the province where oil and hazardous goods spills are distressingly common and where there is good reason to believe that there is a heightened risk of more pipeline breaks and more spills in the years ahead given the intense ramp-up in natural gas industry water-use now underway.
Misplaced loyalty?
In 2009, the Ministry of Environment's Environmental Emergencies Program released what it called an "annual report," covering spills in various regions of the province. Due to budgetary restraints it was the first such report released in several years. There has been no such report in the two years since. In it, the ministry noted that there were a total of 587 spills in the Fort St. John region during 2008. In just the first quarter of 2009, the ministry reported, 191 spills were recorded, a 28 per cent increase over the year before. The compilation of regional statistics ended by noting that a further "30 reports came in during (the) first 20 days of April 2009, alone."
Of note, the 2009 spills report predates the significant upsurge in fracking operations that now characterize gas well developments in northeast B.C. Such operations have already set global gas industry records for water usage and are certain to herald an increase in the volumes of toxic wastewater that must be moved either by truck and/or pipeline to injection wells for disposal.
All of which is of note when considering the question of whose interests -- those of the general public, or of the oil and gas industry -- are served when the regulator withholds information on a small, but nonetheless deadly spill. More than six months after the spill occurred, an allegedly ongoing investigation prevents the Oil and Gas Commission from disclosing further details about what happened that day and in the days after. With regard to this incident, at least, it appears that the interests of the OGC's industry clients take precedence over that of the public.
With more toxic waste spills a certainty in the months and years ahead, such loyalty does not inspire confidence.
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Kept in Dark by BC's Oil and Gas Commission: Page 2 of 2
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Hawkman
1 year ago
The answer is obvious
The OCG represents the interests of the gas and oil industry. This one stop shopping "regulator" was invented by this industry who somehow convinced the politicians it was in everyone's best interest to follow this model. No more need for lengthy referals to the Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Forests, Ministry of Natural Resource Operations, etc., this industry now get its permts directly and swiftly from this agency. OCG employees no longer fall under the jurisdiction of the Public Service Act and therefor are not public servants. To heck with the public interest - But they do serve the gas & oil industry well. I suspect the OCG executive probably spends more time meeting industry executives in Calgary than they do meeting Ministry of Energy and Mines staff in Victoria, or even at Charlie Lake. Ben, by now your FOI requests must get red flagged and go strait to the top for actioning - or not? Keep up the good work.
reallife
1 year ago
Yes, it is obvious....
Yes, it is obvious that the OGC is much better at regulating the oil and gas industry than the myriad branches of government were. The various sections of the ministries dealing with land, forests, wildlife, health and the environment were totally incapable of dealing with the volume of work presented by a burgeoning oil and gas industry. This was due to chronic underfunding and competing priorities. One of the many good ideas the NDP government had was to protect the OGC from financial restraints by establishing a self-financing organization. Fees were increased dramatically - for example, the application fee for a well authorization pre-OGC was $75, it is now $18,700! And a special tax was placed on production to cover the remaining costs of running the regulator. The tax is adjusted regularly to meet the expected budget of the OGC.
Adequate funding and the consolidation of professional regulators into one group dedicated to the oversight of the oil and gas industry has resulted in a huge improvement in oilfield practices.
Birch
1 year ago
This seems fairly typical...
If industry can, it "self-regulates." When this fails, it supports a regulatory body that can't do its job because of lack of funding (a Republican strategy in the US, for sure). When this fails, it works hard to get a regulatory body it can control (more or less), some features of which may be the secrecy and discouraging of FOI's mentioned in the article.
Professed purposeful interest in public safety issues, etc, consists of superficial lip service blandishments to reassure an apathetic populace while the destruction of the natural commons goes on unabated.
The Enbridge Gateway Joint Review Panel serves as a kind of high profile version of this principle, more above board with respect to public information (although the information overload can serve as a kind of camouflage in and of itself).
pwlg
1 year ago
thanks Ben
It's about time we in British Columbia began to focus on our own oil and gas industry (mostly serviced by Albertan companies and workers).
As Parfitt has pointed out, the OGC is not just mandated to monitor the oil and gas companies but are to ensure public health and safety and environmental regulations are being upheld.
Nikiforuk wrote a great piece 10 years ago on the Ladyfern gas field in NE BC that indicated just how "sour" our OGC was in BC. Even regulators in Alberta and in the US wondered whether or not the OGC in BC actually existed or was only there for show.
What happened in Ladyfern even shocked regulators in Alberta!
Parfitt mentioned Nikiforuk's article written for Canadian Business in his Tyee column.
http://thetyee.ca/News/2004/06/01/Up_In_Smoke/
From Parfitt's column: (a quote for our disgraced former Premier)
"We are very proud of the Ladyfern discovery just made in northeastern British Columbia. It's the largest discovery in the last 15 years in Canada, and it puts B.C. back on the map for people examining our oil and gas reserves," Campbell crowed. "One Ladyfern well is producing 100 million cubic feet of natural gas a day, and others are producing 60 million. By itself, Ladyfern represents 25 per cent of British Columbia's total production. There are many more Ladyferns in northeastern British Columbia - and we intend to find them."
From Nikiforuk's 2002 article in Canadian Business:
"...like a moose devoured by wolves, Ladyfern is now little more than a hill of bones. The flock of helicopters that serviced the great gas rush are gone. Roads that supported 1,000 service vehicles a day now see fewer than two dozen trucks. Bonanza wells that pumped enough gas to heat small cities now cough up salt water. What many analysts initially talked up as an 'elephant play' of one trillion cubic feet has been downsized to a 400-billion-cubic-foot warthog - or less."
Campbell devoured BC's resources so our treasury would look good coming up to each election. However, this last election Campbell had no real chips to play us suckers anymore, except as we found out later he used the ace he had up his sleeve; a blatant lie.
The great recession had hit and the oil and gas industry was no longer able to buy into Campbell's 99 year leases to access our fossil riches.
Keep up the good work Ben. Let's see, we have the BC Rail public inquiry to push for in 2013 and now the OGC inquiry. A little over 1 more year and hopefully the citizens of BC get to holler for the truth!
pwlg
1 year ago
reallife
And I guess that's why the BC Budget shows $140 million paid back to the oil and gas industry from provincial revenues...yup, things have improved!
pwlg
1 year ago
even under the NDP
Glen Clark's government was building roads financed by BC taxpayers for oil and gas companies to access their claims. A $100 million road was built in the last year of Clark's tenure for Campbell to exploit for political purposes.
The OGC is being financed from the province's royalties and not by some separate fee. It's a loss to BC residents who own the resources.
reallife
1 year ago
pwlg
OK, lets have it your way. Return to $75 well authorization applications and the taxpayers can kick in the rest of the funds (BTW, you are wrong, there is a special levy on production to fund the OGC). And lets go back to the old way of doing business: no public or First Nation consultation, no wildlife studies, rampant flaring, incomplete site restoration, you get the picture...
The Ladyfern story is a bit of topic but I can tell you that BC did make a lot of money from the resource. The only losses were in the industry as a whole through spending more money than was necessary to recover the gas. The provincial government's long-standing regulatory regime (not the OGC's) regarding the spacing of wells was not designed to deal with such a prolific reservoir. It allowed for more wells to be drilled than were required solely for efficient production. This was compounded by the system used throughout western Canada of leasing oil and gas rights in small areas to the highest bidders. Again, something that usually works very well for the governments but was not the most efficient at Ladyfern. There is lots more to this story including an attempt to slow down development by refusing to allow helicopter drilling rigs but as I said the issue is a bit off topic.
pwlg
1 year ago
ladyfern on topic reallife
"BC made a lot of money"
Ladyfern off topic...I don't think so, read the links.
Ladyfern was so badly regulated and managed. Both present and future generations lost on the Ladyfern wild west action. The gas flooded the market, depressing prices throughout North America and therefore robbed the provincial coffers of the potential revenue we would have received if the field was managed properly.
You seem to think that we either take a non-transparent and accountable regulator or its previous incarnation as options. It seems you are unwilling to hear what Parfitt has to say in his article.
Royalties are adjusted to take into account other expenses of the gas industry which would include contributions to fund the OGC. I would rather the companies pay the going rate without any deductions and then we have some way of tracking revenue and government hidden subsidies.
Why did the BC government under Christy Clark write in a $140 million expense to the oil and gas industry?
Granville
1 year ago
Let me tell you something about the BC Oil and Gas commission
They are more gas than oil. In fact they are all hot air.
They hired a very bright young man from ther Alberta governemnt a couple of years ago, moved him from Edmonton to Victoria and set him to work planning the BC gas industry. Four months later they fired him without any cause, gave him a year's severance pay and told him he didn't fit in.
The reason he didn't fit in is because most of the BC Oil and Gas Commission staff are ex-forestry workers who have never worked in the oil and gas industry. They don't understand anything that doesn't come with a stumpage fee or a chain saw. This lad was too clever for their liking because he knew what he was doing, so they cut his legs out from under him.
No problem. He is better off in Alberta anyway and BC is a bed of corruption and jobs-for-the-boyz. Like most things in Bc, the BCOC is there for show. Those dead-heads do whatever the guvmint tells them to do, and it has nothing to do with oil, gas, or business at all.
Granville
1 year ago
Looks like that's a wrap for BCOGC.
They are a bunch of dipshits who couldn't find their own bascksides with both hands. End of message.
Granville
1 year ago
Looks like that's a wrap for BCOGC.
They are a bunch of dipshits who couldn't find their own bascksides with both hands. End of message.