LNG - Fracking

An Alberta government lawyer argued in court this week that Jessica Ernst's lawsuit on hydraulic fracturing and groundwater contamination should be struck down on the grounds that it would open a floodgate of litigation against the province. "There could be millions or billions of dollars worth of damages," argued Crown counsel Neil Boyle.

The actions of a young, tough-talking First Nations leader in northeast B.C. last week, that sparked the embarrassing reversal of a cabinet decision to fast-track natural gas plants, appears to be rallying province-wide Aboriginal opposition to Liquified Natural Gas plans. On April 16, 33-year-old Fort Nelson Chief Sharleen Gail held up an eagle feather at an LNG industry summit in her territory as she emotionally ordered B.C. government officials to exit the conference, to the sound of Dene drummers.

'Oil, tar sands, coal, natural gas: What's behind the expansion drive of Canada's and North America's fossil fuel industries?' talk by Roger Annis of Vancouver Ecosocialist Group, at University of California Santa Barbara, April 11, 2014

Members of the Fort Nelson First Nation, led by the strong words of their chief councillor, Sharleen Gale, literally drummed out government and industry representatives from a conference the band was hosting on liquefied natural gas (LNG), Wednesday afternoon. The 3-day conference, titled “Striking the Balance”, was designed to discuss both the economic opportunities and potential environmental impacts of increased fracking in the nation’s territory to supply a gas-hungry, proposed BC LNG industry.

Fort Nelson First Nation drums government, industry reps out of LNG conference, outraged over lack of consultation on surprise gutting of environmental reviews for gas plants.

A group of B.C. officials has been kicked out of a First Nations forum on liquefied natural gas over the government’s decision to exempt most of the gas produced in the province from mandatory environmental assessment. Chief Sharleen Gale of the Fort Nelson First Nation, organizer of the summit in the northeast corner of the province, asked the bureaucrats to leave and escorted them out. “There was no consultation as far as changing that policy,” said Chief Terry Teegee of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council, which represents eight First Nations communities in northern B.C.

Chief Sharleen Gale Ft Nelson First nation asks the Province of BC to leave the LNG Forum and also asks Industry to do the same in Ft Nelson. This is in response to Christy Clark government announcement of removing LNG Plants from Environmentl Screening process all the while they say they seek a new relationship with First nations based on respect and mutual goals.

The way to beat Vladimir Putin is to flood the European market with fracked-in-the-USA natural gas, or so the industry would have us believe. As part of escalating anti-Russian hysteria, two bills have been introduced into the US Congress – one in the House of Representatives (H.R. 6), one in the Senate (S.

In an increasingly explosive political climate in the Kitimat area over a controversial vote on the Northern Gateway pipeline, the Mayor of Kitimat was flash mobbed by a group of mostly First Nations people, donning "No Enbridge" shirts at a Haisla girls basketball championship on Sunday. "No Enbridge!  No Enbridge!  No Enbridge!" yelled the packed gymnasium crowd, nearly all wearing black protest shirts. "When you're in politics for 36 years, I guess I kind of expected it," Mayor Joanne Monaghan told the Vancouver Observer Wednesday.

When labour leader Jim Sinclair turned up at the legislature last week for release of the workforce plan for the liquefied natural gas industry, I teased him that he’s being seen around the halls of government more often than when the New Democratic Party was in power. Sinclair, the longtime president of the B.C. Federation of Labour, took it with good humour, reminding me of the joke about his predecessor Ken Georgetti — that he had an actual seat at the cabinet table in the NDP government.