LNG industry in B.C. threat to environment and energy security: study

B.C.’s liquefied natural gas industry threatens to harm the environment and erode Canada’s energy security, says a new analysis.

Geoscientist David Hughes, in a study for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, warns that LNG is far from the clean fuel that the B.C. government portrays it to be. Water filling the equivalent of nearly 22,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools a year would be required in the industry’s fracking process in drilling for natural gas in northeast British Columbia, he said.

“Almost all of B.C.’s future gas production is expected to involve fracking, which requires much more water and produces much more greenhouse-gas emissions than conventional drilling,” Mr. Hughes said in his 50-page report to be released Tuesday. “A major public concern is the amount of water and the chemicals and other additives used in the fracking process, as well as the potential for contamination of surface water through surface casing failures and improper disposal of fracking waste water.”