Protesters erected a 15-foot fracking rig last November in front of B.C. Premier Christy Clark’s Vancouver home. A new report, set to be published in the journal of the Seismological Society of America, examines an area straddling the B.C.-Alberta border and finds that between 90 and 95 per cent of seismic activity Magnitude 3 or larger in the last five years was caused by activity connected to hydraulic fracturing, widely known as "fracking."
The B.C. budget claims the province is making money from shale gas. But last month The Tyee showed the province is pouring more cash into the industry than it is getting back.
In fact the only time the B.C. government made any money from shale gas was during a land lease boom nearly a dozen years ago. Ever since then, revenues have dwindled to next to nothing due to low royalties and taxpayer-funded subsidies to the ailing shale gas industry.
As a policy analyst with the right-wing think tank, the Fraser Institute, Fazil Mihlar co-authored a paper that among other things, advised British Columbia to do away with its environmental assessment act.
First Nations leaders have rejected BC Minister of Natural Gas Development Rich Coleman's recent comments that the BC Government has the full support of First Nations impacted by the Petronas LNG project proposed for Lelu Island.
[Webpage editor's note: This scientific paper has great significance for the plans in BC to create a large fracking/LNG industry. The implication that the increase in methane emissions in the US may be partly due to oil and gas development is another reason to reject claims that BC LNG would reduce world-wide emissions by replacing coal in Asia.]
Our leaders thought fracking would save our climate. They were wrong.
Global warming is, in the end, not about the noisy political battles here on the planet’s surface. It actually happens in constant, silent interactions in the atmosphere, where the molecular structure of certain gases traps heat that would otherwise radiate back out to space. If you get the chemistry wrong, it doesn’t matter how many landmark climate agreements you sign or how many speeches you give. And it appears the United States may have gotten the chemistry wrong. Really wrong.
Nearly 60 protesters blocked the driveway of a storage plant for natural gas on March 7. Its owners want to expand the facility, which the opponents say would endanger nearby Seneca Lake. But their concerns were global, as well.
“There’s a climate emergency happening,” one of the protesters, Coby Schultz, said. “It’s a life-or-death struggle.”
The federal government has pushed the pause button on a final decision for the Pacific NorthWest LNG (PNW) project, delaying it by three months until the company provides more information on environmental and Aboriginal impacts.
This includes: effects on fish and fish habitat including the Flora Bank, effects on marine mammals, effects of construction noise and light on human health, and effects on current Aboriginal use of lands and resources for traditional purposes.
The federal department, Environment and Climate Change Canada, has given the green light to the controversial Woodfibre LNG project, ruling on Friday that the proposal is "not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects."
A Pan-Asian partnership, lead by the Malaysian government's Petronas corporation, is proposing to build a massive liquid natural gas (LNG) project on BC's north coast: Pacific NorthWest LNG.
The decision whether to approve or reject this proposal is now in the hands of Prime Minister Trudeau. It will be his first major climate-vs-fossil test. And it is a doozy.
