Even The Economist is concerned about the way the environment gets short shrift from governments when they weigh the economic benefits of their decisions.
Check it out at:
So our developers over at StormCode took a moment to upgrade our petition page. Once you have sent in your petition, it sends you to a forward page where you can pass the petition on to your friends, automatically, from the Petrocant website, no fuss no muss.
Easy as key lime pie.
For those who’ve sent a message to Alberta politicians already, feel free to do so again and pass on the petition to others. We’ve made it even easier to do so.
If you are just looking to forward the petition on, and not resign it, you can do that on the new forwarding page. Tell your friends, family, kids, grandkids, pets, and anyone else able to sign a petition. We are so close to 1000 messages sent, we only need 150 more or so and we can break that milestone!
Ranchers fight plan for gas fields in Kananaskis
As a result of its merger with Petro-Canada, Suncor Energy will inherit a nasty brouhaha that has been brewing on the Eastern Slopes of the Rockies, the Herald’s Deborah Yedlin writes today.
A group of six ranchers calling itself “the Big Loop Group” is opposing a natural gas pipeline linking two fields in Kananaskis Country, arguing the plan poses a threat to the environment.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Technology/Petro+Canada+Ranchers/1440852/story.html
In an unprecedented move last month, Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) halted a Petro-Canada project hearing process after an employee disclosed a new personal relationship with an employee of the oil and gas company.
The ERCB employee had a crush on the Petro-Canada employee during at least part of the hearings–which began last November– but only handed over a business card on Jan.30, the last day of public presentations in High River.
The board says based on the results of an external investigation, conducted over the past month, it’s satisfied the relationship will not influence the hearing. The process to determine whether Petro-Canada can drill 11 sour gas wells and construct new pipe-lines near Longview will continue unabated.
“We wanted to be 100 per cent certain the integrity of the process in this case remained intact,” said board spokesman Bob Curran.
“Bringing in a third party ensures in our mind that transparency continues, and also that it’s not a matter of us strictly investigating ourselves.”
However, the investigation has done little to silence critics of the project, or the board.
“This hearing should be null and void,”said Alberta’s Green Party Leader Joe Anglin.
Anglin said the staff involved need to be named so the public and opponents of the project can also judge whether there is any conflict of interest.
“The board is wrong to keep this quiet.”
A letter from the investigator, lawyer Perry Mack, lays out some details about the relationship–even though their identities, and even their sex, are being kept secret based on the ERCB’s privacy rules.
The dating began with a dinner on Feb. 7 — a week after public hearings in High River ended, but before the hearing process was formally over.
“A personal relationship followed,” Mack said.
In interviews with the investigator, the Petro-Canada employee was “emphatic” that a ground rule of the relationship was the two could not discuss matters of substance related to the hearing. Together, the couple watched a TV news program on the hearing, and then “talked a lot about the hearing” — but only in the context of “how they came to be together.”
Mack said he believes the couple.
In his letter, he also said the ERCB employee and the Petro-Canada employee were involved in separate parts of the hearing.
By taking a paid administrative leave, the ERCB employee will have no further involvement on the file, Mack said.
The ERCB added that the employee is not a decision-maker in the process.
Mack conducted his investigation based on interviews with both parties, as well as other ERCB staff members. He also obtainedsomee-mails. Another lawyer, David Jones, then made recommendations.
Neither Petro-Canada or the ERCB will talk about whether the two are still dating.
The ERCB will not give any details of the status of their employee.Petro-Canada says their employee is still working on the Sullivan Field file.
Kyle Happy, a spokesman for Petro-Canada, said the investigation “confirms the integrity of the hearing process.”
But he said the company never had concerns about the relationship in first place.
“We have full confidence in our employee,”Happy said.
Even before news of the relation-ship flared up, the Sullivan Field hearing never lacked controversy.
The Petro-Canada project has been fought by environmentalists and landowners because of the impact they believe it will have on land, water and wildlife. There are also safety concerns. The sour gas pipeline will travel 440 metres away from the nearest home in the Eden Valley reserve.
Robert Shotclose, a Bearspaw administrator originally from Eden Valley, said he is not surprised the investigation found nothing wrong with the relationship.
He said the general perception across Alberta is that the ERCB “always comes down on the side of the industry.”
The band opposes the development, saying the pipeline shouldn’t be routed near houses on the reserve.
But Canada’s pristine natural image, which is one of the factors driving Canada’s high ranking, could be at risk, according to the World Economic Forum.
“Canada’s natural resources constitute a key strength,” according to the Geneva-based think-tank’s annual assessment of the tourism industry’s status and viability in 133 countries.
Canada jumped to fifth place from ninth while the U.S. fell from seventh to eighth in the WEF annual rankings.
Switzerland, Austria and Germany remain the top three, holding identical spots to 2008, while France jumped from 10th to fourth in the new ranking.
The unstable and impoverished African nation of Chad is in last place.
While the WEF points out that Canada has nine sites recognized by the United Nations as world heritage areas, it noted that Canada’s reputation is in question by Canadian tourism industry executives in areas such as carbon dioxide emissions and the number of endangered species.
“This is of particular concern given the importance of the natural environment for Canada’s tourism, coupled with the fact that, in recent years, sustainable tourism has become a sensitive issue among consumers.”
The WEF, which interviewed about 13,000 executives around the world, including 79 Canadians, assesses a variety of factors that make countries attractive for tourism developers.
They including transport and tourism infrastructure such as highways and air services, as well as regulatory issues, access to labour, safety and security, health, government policy toward tourism, and natural and cultural resources.
WEF spokeswoman Jennifer Blanke said Canada gained ground in this year’s survey partly because countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia fell sharply in several areas.
She noted that Canada’s ranking is aided by “excellent” natural and cultural resources, the world’s top-ranked air infrastructure system, and a perception in the business community that Canadian governments are making more efforts to promote tourism overseas.
She said it’s unclear whether a recent attack on Canada’s image as a credible environmental steward will impact the 2010 results.
The internationally-renowned magazine National Geographic, in a glossy photo spread, presented a devastatingly bleak account of northern Alberta’s landscape as a result of the oilsands industry.
By Darlene Casten, staff reporter
http://www.westernwheel.com/news-oil.htm
A Millarville-area ranching family said although its legal battle with a Calgary-based oil company is over, the damage has been done.
Agnes Ball and her family were awarded close to $200,000 last week in their battle against Imperial Oil to cover the costs for their legal and consulting fees resulting from a lawsuit they filed against the oil company. Imperial Oil was found to be negligent in its handling of a leaky sour gas pipeline where the Balls pastured cattle.
Justice Bruce McDonald ruled that the Ball family should have most of its legal and expert costs paid by the oil company.
Susan Graham, Agnes’ daughter, who also lives on the family’s cattle ranch, said the ruling was not unexpected.
“I’m not surprised that we were able to get our costs because when you are successful at trial that is normal,” she said. “I am glad we were able to recoup the costs we put out.”
Lawyers for Imperial Oil argued that the Balls’ cost request should be reduced because of what they called mixed success at trial and asked that some legal and expert fees be reduced. McDonald agreed to cut the payment for the Balls’ second lawyer and a bill for Dr. Joanne Ball, also Agnes’ daughter, who testified at the trial. The Balls will only receive 50 per cent of the cost for a secondary lawyer and will receive only 65 per cent of the cost billed for Dr. Ball’s expert testimony.
Graham said the reductions will only add up to a few thousand dollars.
“We are going to get our costs as we feel we should,” she said.
In December McDonald awarded the Ball family approximately $65,000 for its loss of cattle and the spin-off effects it had on their cattle operation. The problem started in the summer of 2002 when Imperial Oil workers detected the leaky pipeline. Repair work began without the Balls’ knowledge and contaminated soil was piled up on the pasture land and water laced with hydrocarbons was also pumped on to the land.
The next spring the Balls said they had a difficult calving season and many of their cows became infertile.
Justice McDonald found that the tie to the Imperial Oil pipeline cleanup and the health of the animals was strong enough to deem the company negligent.
Graham said although the court case is done, there are lasting effects for themselves and others.
“It breaks your trust and faith that people will do the right thing,” she said. “You become a skeptic that people are going to tell you the truth.”
Others who have found themselves in the same situation are hopeful this case will create a precedent.
“You wouldn’t believe the number of calls we have received from complete strangers who have been fighting with oil and gas companies for years who have thanked us for taking this all the way,” she said. “They said it will help the next person.”
Not sense of humour or a beautiful set of pearly whites, but the familiarity of day-to-day contact with another person–no matter how glamorous or mundane the setting–is what brings out cupid’s arrow.
I was reminded of this decidedly unromantic fact upon hearing of the provincial energy regulator’s announcement Thursday that it was suspending an ongoing and contentious energy application due to a “personal” relationship between a Petro-Canada employee and a board employee–the latter who made the bombshell admission 72 hours after Valentine’s Day.
The Energy Resources Conservation Board has been holding public hearings since Nov. 12 on Petro-Canada’s controversial proposal to drill 11 sour gas wells and build a pipeline in the Eastern Slopes west of Longview.
All that has now come to an unprecedented halt. The board employee, of undisclosed gender, has been placed on administrative leave, and a third party brought in to investigate whether the integrity of the hearings has been compromised.
I asked board spokesman Bob Curran just what a “personal” relationship means in the 21st century. Although he acknowledged the vague wording, he wasn’t budging.
“What you have to understand is, because of the privacy act, there is very little we can say about this,” says Curran. “I’m legally prohibited from giving away any details.”
By Friday afternoon, Petro-Canada spokesman Kyle Happy had joined the cryptic conversation, assuring media the investigation “will demonstrate that the process has not been jeopardized in any way.”
Just when I started to think I’d entered a Seinfeld script, things got more entertaining. I called up Andrew Nikiforuk, the one person I know who is familiar with the board and, married with three sons, also with the ways of love.
But whereas I was thinking possible candlelight dinners and walks in the park, Nikiforuk’s mind went straight to the gutter.
“People have been saying for years that the ERCB and the industry are in bed together,” says Nikiforuk, an award-winning author who has followed the industry for years.
“Now we have hard evidence to prove it.”
No fan of the board, Nikiforuk says this latest boondoggle is another example of the hazards of having a provincial energy regulator that receives 58 per cent of its funding from the oil and gas industry.
“Their mandate to be impartial has been compromised once again, but this time it’s in the bedroom, not the boardroom.”
Nikiforuk is nevertheless impressed the staid environs of a hearing would spawn a relationship with enough sparks to shut down the whole show.
“Sex is the last thing you’d think of when you walk into an ERCB hearing,” he says. “I would actually argue that it’s an effective form of birth control.”
According to Joe Anglin, Nikiforuk’s not the only observer having fun with this latest news in an otherwise dry and serious sector.
“The e-mail jokes have been flying back and forth all day,” says Anglin, spokesman for nearly 1,000 Alberta landowners and farmers, who is usually angry, rather than amused, by what goes on at the board.
He shares a couple of the jokes with me. And no, they can’t be printed in this newspaper.
Anglin can be forgiven for having a laugh at the expense of the board. Back in 2007, Alberta’s Energy and Utilities Board, the precursor to the ERCB, hired private investigators who wiretapped Anglin’s home phone during another hearing. Alberta’s privacy commissioner found that the EUB violated two sections of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act by using private eyes to collect information on private citizens.
“They’re no strangers to scandal,” says Anglin, “but this time, we’re the ones having the laugh.”
But this is just a brief interlude, a moment of levity in a world where levity is too often a rare commodity. Soon enough, things will get straight-faced once again the next time Anglin and his fellow landowners square off with the province’s regulator.
Because for these longtime adversaries, proximity has not made the heart grow fonder.
A budding personal relationship has derailed an already contentious hearing into a sour gas project in southern Alberta.
In an unprecedented move, the province’s energy regulator announced Thursday it has suspended an ongoing energy application hearing due to a “personal” relationship between a Petro-Canada representative and an agency employee.
“We’ve never had to take steps of this nature,” said Bob Curran, a spokesman for the Energy Resources Conservation Board.
“We just want to ensure that the integrity of the process hasn’t been compromised in any way.”
The reasons for the delay shocked and infuriated stakeholders in the Longview area.
“My clients and I are simply surprised,” said lawyer Stan Carscallen, who represents a group of ranchers and landowners who are opposed to the drilling.
“We had no inkling any such thing was going on.”
Similarly, the lawyer who represents the Stony Nakoda Nations said his clients were stunned and disappointed, given the time, money and energy that has gone into the month-long process.
“We vigorously object to any semblance of (bias),” Oliver MacLaren said. “This is all a bit of a shock.”
The board has been holding public hearings since Nov. 12 on Petro-Canada’s controversial proposal to drill 11 sour gas wells and build a pipeline in the Eastern Slopes west of Longview.
“This has been an involved process so these shenanigans must have been pretty shady or swarmy to call things to a halt,” said 72-year-old rancher Harvey Gardner, who is opposed to the Sullivan Field project.
Curran would only disclose that the relationship began in this calendar year and that the board employee told panel officials about the relationship this week.
“The panel and other staff were unaware of (the relationship) prior to this point.”
A spokesman for Petro-Canada said the company will co-operate with the probe.
“Obviously this is disappointing news,” Kyle Happy said.
“We respect the ERCB’s decision and their hearing process. We are therefore taking this matter very seriously and will co-operate fully with the ERCB in its investigation.”
The board said it will hire an outside investigator to look into the relationship to make sure that the “integrity” of the process is upheld.
The board took pains to point out the agency employee is not a “decision maker” at the hearing, but both people have been involved in the hearing. The employee has been placed on an administrative leave, pending the results of the investigation.
Curran said in his nine years at the agency this is the only time he can recall a board hearing being suspended due to a personal relationship.
“We want to avoid any perceived conflicts,” he said. “We’re very sensitive about those sorts of things.”
Curran said it is not unheard of to see relationships between board staff members and companies with applications before the board.
“But what we do in those situations is those staff don’t participate in any files that involve any company where there’s a conflict or perceived conflict of interest,” he said.
“For example, if someone here had a spouse who worked at EnCana, then they wouldn’t work on any files that pertain to EnCana.”
Curran said the board hasn’t yet found an outside investigator, but he hopes the process will be completed as quickly as possible.
“This proceeding has taken a long time as it is.”
It remains to be seen whether the investigation into the relationship will lead to a new hearings, or what actions will be taken.
The ERCB panel hearing Petro-Canada’s application will make the final decision on what will be done.
All parties opposing the drilling said they eagerly anticipate the results of the investigation to know whether the process picks up where it left off, or starts over again.
February 19, 2009
Calgary… The Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) is engaging an independent third party to assist in the investigation of an ERCB employee involved in the ERCB hearing on Petro-Canada’s Sullivan Field applications. The ERCB hearing is now on hold, pending the outcome of the investigation. The purpose of these steps is to ensure that the integrity of the ERCB hearing is upheld.
On February 17, 2009, an ERCB employee disclosed that the employee had recently commenced a personal relationship with a Petro-Canada employee. The ERCB employee is not a decision maker in the hearing. However, both parties have been involved in the hearing on behalf of their organizations.
The ERCB employee has been removed from the file and has been placed on administrative leave from employment with the ERCB, pending the investigation into this matter.
As the integrity of the ERCB hearing needs to be upheld and the potential impact of this matter on the hearing needs to be understood, the ERCB is in the process of engaging an independent third party to assist in the investigation of the matter. The investigation will include an analysis of what impact, if any, this matter may have on the hearing and the ERCB Panel’s ability to fulfill its adjudicative function objectively and impartially.
The ERCB hearing began on November 12, 2008 in High River and pertains to a series of Petro-Canada applications to drill eleven sour gas wells, construct and operate one multi-well battery, and construct and operate two sour gas pipelines in Southern Alberta’s eastern slopes.
-30-
For more information, contact:
Bob Curran, ERCB Communications
Phone: (403) 297-3392
Email: bob.curran@ercb.ca
Alberta Government | Newsroom | Ministries Listing | Energy Resources Conservation Board Home Page | News Releases | Top of Page |
Climate change expected to decrease Alberta’s water supply Energy sector must reduce its reliance on water
Edmonton, February 9, 2009 — With available fresh water resources expected to decrease as a result of climate change, Alberta faces the challenge of meeting its growing demand for water in asustainable manner, according to a new report by the Pembina Institute.
“We need to plan ahead and consider the impact that climate change is likely to have on fresh water resources in Alberta,” says Mary Griffiths, the lead author of the report, Heating Up in Alberta: Climate Change, Energy Development and Water.
The report draws attention to the decline of summer river flows, the future effects of climate change on water supply and the projected growth in demand for water for energy production and to meet the needs of a growing population. It also documents Alberta’s contribution to climate change through growing greenhouse gas emissions, which the Government of Alberta will allow to continue to increase through 2020.
“This report should encourage efforts to reduce water use for energy production,” says Griffiths. “It may also motivate greater action in Alberta to address climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
Griffiths says new ways must be found to reduce water consumption for the production and upgrading of bitumen from the oil sands. “Reducing water consumption is especially important when developing new, large-scale projects for electricity generation and bitumen extraction, which are likely to be in operation for 40 years or more.”
Water use for electricity can be reduced by increasing the proportion generated by wind or solar sources. Coal-fired power plants, which produce 60 per cent of Alberta’s electricity, consume a lot of water compared with most other types of electricity generation. They are also the largest contributor to Alberta’s greenhouse gas emissions. The report also recommends charging for water used by the energy sector.
“Putting a price on water for energy use serves two purposes,” says Griffiths. “It would encourage conservation and also provide funds for better monitoring and management of surface and groundwater resources, as well as research.”
Download the report from http://www.pembina.org/pub/1779.
For more information contact:
Mary Griffiths
Senior Policy Analyst
The Pembina Institute
780-433-6675
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