Streeper speaks candidly about the future
“We could be on the verge of becoming a ghost town” Mayor Bill Streeper
On Wednesday April 23rd, Mayor Bill Streeper, on behalf of Northern Rockies Regional Municipality (NRRM), issued a public apology (see page 4) to government and industry officials who were ejected from the BC First Nation LNG-Shale Gas Summit.
The summit was held in the community hall at the Northern Rockies Regional Recreation Centre by Fort Nelson First Nation (FNFN) from April 14th to 16th.
On the final day of the summit, FNFN Chief Sharleen Gale requested that the invited industry and government representatives and presenters leave the Summit. This was in response to a change in policy decision.
An ‘Order in Council’ had been issued by the Province to remove one of two environmental assessments affecting sweet gas plants. The FNFN felt they should have been consulted.
The two assessments are conducted one, by the Environmental Assessment office, and a second, by the BC Oil and Gas Commission (OGC), which is the regulatory agency for oil and gas activity in the province. It was deemed that having two parties conducting the same review process was redundant, and the duplication was unnecessary. As ‘sweet gas’ plants are considered low risk to the environment, having two review processes was costly, time consuming, and the repetition produced no benefit. The OGC assessment was the one that would remain in place.
Several government legislated regulations are also place, including the ‘Environment Management Act and Regulations’, the ‘Oil and Gas Activity Act and Regulations’, and the ‘Forest and Range Practices Act and Regulations’, that protect land, air and Water. Gaining approvals for any activity is dependent upon meeting and complying with regulations. In addition, industry is subject to compliance and enforcement audits, as well as penalties.
Mayor Streeper commented on moving forward with current operations, and the necessity of LNG for this area; “The review process discussed was already being done. The money that was spent on a second review could be re-invested in enhancing more projects in British Columbia, and there’s a good chance it would be paid to the people in the north. This was a cleanup in the policies.
”Also in the change, was an adjustment to the size of gas plants. When you go for an assessment, plant A requires an assessment according to its size – if plant B is twice the size it could fall under a different assessment. The difference between four smaller plants versus one larger plant that can produce as much gas or more than the four, is that the larger plant leaves less of a footprint.
“Is the larger plant not saving the environment per cubic metre of gas? If you take the footprint of the plant divided by the cubic meter production its doing, it’s less of a footprint – way more environmentally friendly. You have to consider that it’s one pipeline, one road not several. Also, the document stated ‘sweet gas’, ‘not sour’, and each require different assessments.
“BC has some of the highest most stringent regulations in the oil and gas industry, and I’ll challenge anyone on the fracking we’re doing in Canada – the cementing/casing in Canada is done completely differently than elsewhere – the process is called cement to surface, and once completed, it’s pressure tested…Too many lay-people are coming out with claims about the oil and gas industry that are untrue. The regulations are there, and everyone has to abide by them.”
The Mayor believes that untrue claims are based on a mistrust of science by some. It was stated that activity should stop, and a complete study of water should be done before any more work ensues. “The service sector people cannot afford another moratorium. If I’m a company who’s already started operations, and I’m following rules that I believe are more than adequate, then there’s no loophole. So why would anyone want to shut everything down for another six or eight years to do yet another study, and leave people out of work?
“We could be on the verge of becoming a ghost town. So if someone like the FNFN lands department wants to be in charge of all of the scientific assessments like they’re saying they do, and telling the rest of us that there will no LNG unless they say so, it could end up that nobody will be working for eight more years – if nobody’s working for six months they’re going to be gone – in Fort Nelson, what else is there?
“BC is attractive to Asian markets for many reasons,” says Mayor Streeper. He provided the following analogy: “A CEO in a boardroom in Calgary tells the exploration department of a gas company that there’s going to be a sale of gas off-shore in BC. They need X amount of cubic meters of gas for when the LNG plant is built (three years for example). To get that, they’ll go to the cheapest fastest place to find the gas, and if that happens to be Alberta because we’re not ready for business, then it’s our loss. They’re going say, we have three years, and it’s going to take two for consultation in BC, so why would go there?
“The reason they want to come here, is because the closer you get to these mountains, the bigger the prize – it’s more economical to use the shale gas here because there’s way more of it in cubic meters. Instead of a well lasting only four years elsewhere, wells here can last 40 years or even more. It’s less of an environmental footprint to operate here than uprooting the ground all over the place for just a couple of years of gas production elsewhere. Also, once a company is established in an area, applications for further work generally become easier over time, because many of the details have already been covered,” says Streeper.
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