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We'll Frack Alberta's Next Election, Vow Landowners

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    We'll Frack Alberta's Next Election, Vow Landowners

    We'll Frack Alberta's Next Election, Vow Landowners
    Drilling accident fuels rebellion demanding halt to hydraulic fracturing.

    By Andrew Nikiforuk, Today, TheTyee.ca



    Red Deer River, Alberta: Crew cleans up spill after fracking caused oil well in area to blow. Photo: ASRG Alberta Surface Rights Group.



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    Energy
    Find more energy reporting on The Tyee.



    One of Alberta's largest landowner groups says it will make hydraulic fracturing a major election issue this spring if the Alberta government does not act on its request for an immediate moratorium on the controversial industry practice.

    Don Bester, president of the Alberta Surface Rights Group, which represents 1,400 landowners, told The Tyee that if the government doesn't "step up to the plate," the group will hold politicians "criminally responsible" for any horizontal drilling incidents that contaminate groundwater or leak poisonous hydrogen sulfide.

    Hydraulic fracturing blasts open tight oil, gas and coal formations with highly pressurized volumes of water, sand and undisclosed chemicals in order to release methane or light oil.

    The 60-year-old technology has boosted gas and oil reserves but has become the subject of serious government investigations throughout the world, though not in Alberta. Concerns about "fracking" range from measuring the risk of surface and groundwater contamination to its role in causing increased earthquake activity and dangerous methane leaks.

    Bester's high profile group called for a full moratorium on hydraulic fracturing last week after a Calgary-based company injected fluids at such high pressure into a 1,800-metre-deep oil formation that the liquids travelled more than 1.2 kilometre underground and ruptured an oil well near Innisfail, Alberta on Jan. 13.

    "It was spewing oil 60 feet into the air all around a pump jack well near the Red Deer River," says 65-year-old Bester.

    "If these companies can't control these fracks, what is the potential to destroy a complete aquifer with toxic chemicals? We're not convinced that these fracks will stay in the formation that they were intended to crack open," adds Bester.

    "The potential to cause cross-communication from the fracking zone to zones that contain active fresh water aquifers is one of the many concerns," warned the group in a public letter to the Alberta government last week.

    "The continual denial by the ERCB (Alberta's energy regulator) that this will not happen is very much a concern as every professional geologist knows there are naturally occurring fractures in every formation." Contamination of fresh water aquifers, warned Bester, is "inevitable."

    Worrisome evidence mount

    Recent U.S. studies in Wyoming and Pennsylvania have shown that the cracking of deep shale formations can strongly increase the risk of methane contamination of well water and groundwater perhaps through wellbores or natural fractures. The mechanisms are not fully understood.

    Fracturing of groundwater formations was first reported in Canada in 1986 when "hydraulic fractures propagated into the underlying water zone" in Manitoba.

    After the Midway fracking incident the ASRG warned that fracking operations could penetrate nearby sour gas wells resulting in catastrophic releases of toxic hydrogen sulfide (H2S).

    "H2S has the extreme potential to cause serious health problems, or even death, to nearby residents that could be totally unaware of a blowout. The dangers of these types of unnoticed incidents that are great distances from the actual fracking site are simply a disaster waiting to happen."

    One such fracking episode in Texas sent plumes of sour gas up an abandoned oil well in 2010.

    Nearly 30 per cent of Alberta's gas reserves contain the deadly neurological toxin. Incredibly, the ERCB has already approved hydraulic fracturing under a massive sour gas field for a new Calgary well.

    Bester says the regulator's response to the Innisfail well blow-out was worrisome. A local farmer tried to alert the Energy Resources Conservation Board about the Jan. 13 incident, but the province's energy regulator failed to answer its emergency phone line.

    The farmer, acting on advice from the ASRG, then informed the fracking crew about the well blowout. "They couldn't believe that a frack job could come to surface more than a mile away," says Bester. Yet it is not uncommon for fracking operations to impact gas or oil wells nearly a mile away.

    As soon as Midway Energy shut down its fracturing operation, the oil gusher "went down to nothing," says Bester. His group, along with Alberta's New Democrats and other civic associations, want an independent investigation of hydraulic fracturing. (Two MLAs in B.C. have asked for a review of that province's massive shale gas industry, too.)

    'That tire will blow'

    The ASRG, whose members deal with drilling and fracking crews on a daily basis, also want more transparency on what has now become a routine occurrence in unconventional oil and gas plays: the contamination of existing wells by fracking operations.

    "If you inflate a tire designed for 28 pounds of pressure and you put 1,000 pounds in it, that tire will blow," explains Bester, a retired reservoir engineer.

    "And that's exactly what happens with to rock formations during hydraulic fracturing operations.... There was so much pressure with the Innisfail frack that the existing nearby well couldn't handle it. "

    In 2010 BC's Oil and Gas Commission (OGC) issued a public safety advisory after highly pressurized injections of northern shale reservoirs resulted in 18 incidents of well contamination. One frack operation blasted chemical fluids and sand into another well just 670 metres away.

    #2
    I really don't think most landowners really realize just how this practice may damage every damn aquifer we have in Alberta and just are we going to have water for our own personal use let alone for livestock. Wake up ranchers and speak up. At least some organizations are not afraid to speak up and I appreciate the efforts ASRG is doing. As I am working for one of the majors I would be punted out door if they knew I was even posting on this site. But I know damn well in a couple years when I have my place paid for I won't have to silenced . So those of you who don't have a ball and chain arround their neck stand up for your rights to have safe and reliable water scourcs.

    Comment


      #3
      The language in our post is pretty strong. When we say ban, perhaps moratorium would be a better word?
      Can hydro fracking be done safely? We really don't know because there just isn't enough scientific study done on this practice? Going by what's happened in Pennsylvania and Wyoming....it doesn't look very promising!
      That is what we are asking for.......get it right before you do it....and if the science says it can't be done safely....then don't do it? I don't think that is too much to ask? After all it is our land, water, and health at stake.......not some fat cat sitting in an office in Calgary or Dallas?
      What is scary is we have this completely incompetent regulator (ERCB) licensing everything that passes over their desk, without any kind of knowledge?
      At a Synergy meeting at Eagle Hill(west of Olds) I asked a senior ERCB official this question:
      "What happens to an old abandoned well drilled 60 years ago, with a weak and decaying cement plug, when you crank up the pressure during a hydro frack? What stops it from blowing that old well out?" (this is an area with a lot of high content H2S wells).
      His answer " We would never hydro frack near an old well. We know exactly how far the frack will crack the formation"......yea, right!!!
      At that time the facilitator grabbed the mike away from me.......before I could ask if they had any kind of a clue where all those old wells were! Like the ones that started leaking in the schoolyard at Calmar!
      Instead she handed it to this old boy who wondered if the companies sponsoring the event were going to have any more baseball caps, as he got there late and they were all gone! That seemed to be the most popular topic of the night!

      Comment


        #4
        An immediate moratorium may be a better request
        and one that would not be out of line with the rest
        of the worlds thinking? It seems no one is as
        hung-ho on this as AB and BC. I understand the
        Americans are rather leery of it, Quebec has an
        outright ban on it, the UK has a moratorium on it
        after their unusual "mini earthquake" event and
        the French have a ban on it after seeing the UK
        experience. Here its a case of "bring it on, the
        bigger the better, to hell with the consequences."

        Comment


          #5
          Unfortunately Alberta is a petro state. Big oil owns the government.
          If you ever get a chance to hear Andrew Nikiforuk talk about how a petro state operates, it isn't hard to see the attitude within the government.
          Bulgaria BANNED hydro fracking last week.....Bulgaria gets it better than our geniuses in Edmonton!

          Comment


            #6
            Grassfarmer ,ASRG on your website you posted a letter to 4 Ministers on a moratorium on fracing , I bet a dollar to a donut that it wasn't well received and have you received any response or are they all to busy on the campaign trail.

            Comment

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