This will be a fight for sure billons at stake. As my kids said we are the ones that will live with the effects of the pipeline. Nice to see them on line asking questions and expessing their concern. Only wish more young people would do the same.The saying is so true we may start it but they will live with it.

At what point, will common sense trump Enbridge and Harper’s rabid greed?

Enbridge has a damned gall, to open an office in BC. Enbridge has done nothing other than, out and out blatantly lie and deceive. The F.N. people are “against” the Embridge pipeline, despite Enbidge’s lie the F.N. are “for” the pipeline. Enbridge has not cleaned up, their last 804 spills. Enbridge can’t even get enough insurance, to cover their spills anymore.

We care about Harper, as much as he cares about the citizens of BC. Why should we take all the risk of, Harper selling our country off, to Communist China? Harper has been kicking BC in the face again, for refusing to be a conduit for China, to pick-up the cheap tar sands oil.

The sure don’t call Harper, spiteful Stevie for nothing.

At what point will common sense trump emotion?

We don’t need the pipeline JohnnyB they do. What is the common sense behind the pipeline, please explain.

shaida I would like to see more information on your claims.

Northern Gateway reflects a huge subsidy to Albertan Big Oil interests, through the use of cheap BC natural gas to produce it. At a projected capacity of 193,000 barrels /day, the opportunity cost of BC gas to produce it is at least $2.7 million/day or $24/barrel. This far outstrips the $8/barrel increase in price Alberta gets by shipping the oil to China. Not only is Enbridge Gateway uneconomic, it is anti-Canadian. The greatest financial benefit to Canada would be to export natural gas to Asia at a 500% increase in price, rather than get a 10% increase for Alberta oil.

The Asian market pays 14 bucks a unit for natural gas. We are paying about 3 bucks per unit right now! As soon as the natural gas market to Asia is fully opened up (pipelines to the coast, port facilities, LNG tankers, etc) B.C. customers will be charged the same the companies get for their exports to Asia: this means 14 bucks!
Have you seen any people going house to house lately offering locked in price guarantees for the long term? (CBC Radio One overnight business report).

Who takes the risk for the Trans Canada Pipeline from Alberta,to Ontario. Who takes the risk for the pipeline from Alberta, to Taylor, then Prince George, and then Vancouver BC.???

Who takes the risk for the pipeline from the Caspian Sea, to Europe. Who takes the risk for the 30,000 miles of oil and gas pipelines under the Gulf of Mexico. Who takes the risk for the pipeline from Canada to the USA. Who will take the risk for the Keystone Pipeline?? Who takes the risks for all the piplines in Mexico and South America??

Whats the argument here?? If the price is right will we allow the pipeline. In other words if we get sufficient monies, and jobs, we will sell our Grandmother?? Or are we saying that under no circumstances do we want this pipeline.

Prince George- North America is awash in cheap natural gas these days, thanks to fracking. BC has the advantage of port facilities, and the ability to create LNG facilities in remote areas. Furthermore, No Federal approval is needed to set up the pipelines, so we can do it quickly. The oversupply of North American gas won’t end anytime soon. But we can sell our gas for a huge differential in price. Or we can waste it by selling it to Alberta for the same price as every other Tom Dick and Harry in North America (which is what we are doing now)
BC’ers have to stop thinking like losers, and start thinking about winning. This is something we can win at. Stop Gateway, stop the waste of BC resources, Stop Gateway, stop the destruction of our environment.

Natural gas pipelines and oil pipelines are two different animals altogether. When a natural gas pipeline break occurs one doesn’t have to mop up a sticky goo.

Herbster, how much of the natural gas resource extraction industry is Canadian owned? Who profits when the price goes up?
How does Canada profit except for some royalties and some jobs?

I agree that we should have a winning attitude but how is it possible to win when the rights to extract, mine and sell the resources are sold to the highest bidder no matter where they come from?

The other day they almost sold the largest potash mine on the continent to a foreign company. Fortunately the government put a stop to it.

We are no longer masters of our own fate.

Albertans fight like hell to get an extra 8 bucks for their oil. BC seems resigned to selling their natural gas for 20% of world price. How sad is it that Conservatives and Liberals in BC roll over and take what is given to them.

By the way the royalty implications are not insignificant. As the price rises, the royalty rate doubles from 12% to 25%. So if the price rose by 500% , a potential of 1000% increase in royalties could be possible.

johnnybelt said: At what point will common sense trump emotion?

here’s a question for you: when will science and economics trump Harper’s political ideology?

also, when will it trump yours?

just asking.

herbster said: By the way the royalty implications are not insignificant. As the price rises, the royalty rate doubles from 12% to 25%. So if the price rose by 500% , a potential of 1000% increase in royalties could be possible.

the operative phrase here is “could be possible”.

pipelines leak. no “could be”s about it, and Enbridge’s do that a lot.

which one of the above do you want to be on?

how much is clean water worth to you?

the next time you’re thirsty, try quenching it with oil, then you’ll understand why so many of us don’t want it built.

I meant “which one of the above do you want to bet on?”

sorry about that.

I meant “which one of the above do you want to bet on?”

sorry about that.

Quebec between a rock and a hard place on gas from shale

Andrew Chung Quebec Bureau The Star
July 25, 2010

MONTREAL—It is like any other natural gas. Once purified, it’s made up of the same carbon and hydrogen atoms. It will flow through a gas stove in exactly the same way.

Below the surface, however, it’s different. Removing it from the chalkboard slate-like shale where it lies, sometimes kilometres underground, is complicated and expensive.

There is another difference. This gas lies in Quebec, the province with arguably the most tortured relationship with fossil fuels.

It could mean thousands of jobs and billions of dollars for the province, potentially redrawing the energy map in Canada.

But the environmental risks of getting this gas has both skeptics and hopefuls frustrated and worried.

The most skeptical? A village on Montreal’s south shore called St-Marc-sur-Richelieu. After an Australian firm came in hoping to drill into the shale beneath, townsfolk started seeking answers. What will the effect be on the water? The air? The landscape?

“We don’t know if it’s a good option for Quebec, especially the way it’s being done now,” said resident Pierre Batellier, who formed a local group called Shale Gas Mobilization.

The town has called for a moratorium on shale gas drilling. In early July council told residents it would even seek a court injunction should there be a local attempt to drill.

“We want the (Quebec) government to guarantee in writing that the health and safety of the citizens will not be affected,” councillor Gilbert LeRoux said.

All the answers thus far are based on what the industry says, LeRoux complains. There need to be independent studies of the effects.

Most of the concern relates to the star of this new drilling show: hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Since the gas is stuck in the rocks, the rocks must be fractured, like taking a baseball bat to a windshield.

To do that, gas companies blast millions of litres of water, sand and a cocktail of chemicals, some toxic, down the well. The gas is liberated and flows up.

2 

This makes it much more expensive than conventional wells, although the latest fracking technology, and the ability to drill horizontally, has improved the odds.

The potential is enormous. Already in British Columbia there are hundreds of shale gas wells at work.

Quebec, particularly in the St. Lawrence Valley between Montreal and Quebec City, is the next motherlode, according to companies exploring here.

“Estimates go from 25 to as high as 50 (trillion cubic feet) of gas,” says Michael Binnion, the high- spirited CEO of Calgary-based Questerre Energy Corp. At the high end, that’s enough to heat 15 million homes for 50 years.

Binnion’s company will have the first well go into production near Quebec City next June. It will be “demonstration” project, to persuade investors and everyone else of the untapped potential. Full production in Quebec, by his company and others, Binnion says, could mean thousands of wells over decades.

It could “make Quebec energy independent in natural gas,” Binnion adds. “That’s a big seismic shift not just for Quebec but for Canada.”

It would mean royalties for Quebec and jobs for Quebecers.

“The biggest impact on the government’s finances will be from income tax, paid by the people who are going to work,” says André Caillé, president of the new Quebec Oil and Gas Association. (A former head of Hydro-Quebec, he’s also advisor to Junex, another company heavily exploring shale gas.)

Caillé says homegrown gas production would end the $2 billion sent west each year to satisfy Quebec’s natural gas needs. “That money would stay in the economy and create … as many as 7,500 well-paid jobs for our young people here.”

Tantalizing words. And Quebecers seem swayed. A CROP firm poll question in March about gas production in the province found 60 per cent of respondents in favour.

Still, environmentalists look to the U.S., where drilling with fracking is now a “megatrend” and where thousands of wells dot the landscape in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Colorado.

They worry about higher greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional natural gas — because of the energy used to get the gas — and water contamination.

Quebecers also see themselves as environmentally conscious. Polls have shown greater opposition to the oilsands in Quebec than in other parts of Canada; up to 70 per cent oppose its transport to Quebec.

Premier Jean Charest embarrassed Ottawa by criticizing its climate change plans at the Copenhagen summit last December. Alberta took it as a slight against the oilsands and immediately brought up how much Quebec benefits from Alberta equalization payments.

3 So, how can Quebecers support shale gas development?

“Being inconsistent is the nature of humans,” says Pierre-Olivier Pineau, a specialist in energy policy at HEC, the University of Montreal-affiliated business school.

“You can oppose oilsands because it’s far away and in Alberta. If it was in Quebec they might have a different view because it would be in their place and they’d benefit.”

André Belisle, president of a Quebec air pollution watchdog called AQLPA, said if Quebecers knew more about shale gas, they’d change their minds.

“They only got one side. ‘We’re going to be so rich, richer than Alberta, and gas is cleaner than coal so let’s go for it right away!’”

In the U.S., concerns about aquifers contaminated with methane or toxic chemicals are growing. In Pennsylvania, some people have complained of contaminated wells after shale gas production began.

Gasland, a new documentary that opened in Toronto theatres this weekend and which is due to air on HBO Canada in August, dramatically shows homeowners in the U.S. lighting their tap water on fire.

Meanwhile, New York has banned shale gas drilling for now. New York City urged a moratorium after finding its watershed was at risk. And in March the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched a nationwide study into fracking and the risk to water.

Industry here says Canada is different than the U.S.: For one, it’s not exempt from safe drinking water regulations.

Binnion says his demonstration well will show the public that there’s little to fear.

“Any time a brand new industry shows up anyplace I think it’s natural for people to have questions. And I think that sometimes the oil and gas industry makes the mistake (of assuming) everybody understands what we do.”

Binnion said his company is being “transparent.” It publishes a list of chemicals it uses in fracking, something most others do not. They include hydrochloric or muriatic acids and glutaraldehyde, a substance that is used as a medical device sterilizer that can cause asthma, nosebleeds, headaches and nausea.

Carcinogenic benzene, toluene and certain pesticides reported in some fracking fluids in the U.S. are not on the list. Binnion says he doesn’t use what he doesn’t list.

More than half of the fracking chemicals stay deep below ground. Up to 40 per cent comes back up and must be either recycled, treated and put back in the watershed, or disposed of as hazardous waste.

 Most in the industry blame any tainted water on spillage at the surface; the sheer depth of the fracking, often a kilometre below water tables, makes it impossible for the fracking fluids or the gas to migrate into aquifers, they insist.

Binnion says gas contamination in the U.S. was, if anything, caused by disrupting biogenic gas, derived from naturally occurring bacteria, in the wells.

But is that true? A 2008 report from Garfield County in Colorado showed that a sharp rise in gas found in groundwater followed a spike in area gas drilling. The gas was scientifically determined to be from the rock, not bacteria. And, the report said, the most affected wells were “near structural features where the faults and fractures maximize the vertical mobility of the gas.”

Then there’s the other main environmental worry. Since shale gas is harder to retrieve than via a conventional well, it takes more energy to do so. Like the oilsands compared to a regular oil well, it produces more greenhouse gas emissions.

GHGenius, a carbon emissions model funded by Natural Resources Canada, included shale gas in the model a few months ago.

Shale gas production releases 27 per cent more carbon dioxide than conventional natural gas, the model predicts. However, taking into account the complete life cycle, from well to burner, the differences may be closer to 10 per cent.

The National Energy Board says that different shale gas regions release different levels of carbon dioxide. Quebec’s Utica shale has far less than the Horn River shale in B.C., making its carbon footprint similar to conventional gas.

That doesn’t comfort people like Belisle.

“Even if shale gas is a little cleaner than tarsands we as a society have to leave fossil fuels. We have to do better than this.”

The debate is just beginning in Quebec. So far, the government shows no signs of stopping exploration. It’s developing new legislation to govern the industry, due out in the fall.

By then, voices are certain to get louder.