Rough-and-Tumble Times
An appeal court praises the ERCB for doing good work, but there is no end in sight to conflicts over hazardous drilling
Easing into quiet retirement was not on the program as the Energy Resources Conservation Board turned 70 in 2008. The anniversary year included a reminder that conflict is routine for Alberta’s oilfield watchdog. A months-long fight over drilling blew up into a human rights duel.
Protesters organized as CEASE, the Committee to Encourage and Advocate a Safe Environment, converged on Tomahawk, a hamlet about 120 kilometers southwest of downtown Edmonton to try axing “sour” oil and gas development. About a quarter of Alberta production is laced with enough hydrogen sulphide to be considered dangerous and warrant getting branded by the ERCB with that nasty designation.
The dispute generated exceptional heat even by the standards of recurring battles over tapping reserves deemed hazardous if sulphur-dioxide concentrations exceed 0.01 per cent or 100 parts per million. The impurity is a lethal nerve gas even in concentrations below one per cent if exposure is prolonged. The battle blew up over applications by Highpine Energy Ltd. for permits to drill six wells into gassy oil pools forecast to be 16-per-cent sour. Children from farms and a fashionable country residential district mingle in a school at Tomahawk.
The hamlet is near the site of the worst sour drilling accident in Alberta history. There are vivid local memories of the 1982 Lodgepole blowout that killed two wild well control workers, injured 16 others and spewed gas into the atmosphere for 68 days in huge volumes that offended noses in Edmonton – and some sensitive ones 1,500 kilometers downwind in Winnipeg – with hydrogen sulphide’s rotten eggs odor.
In approving Highpine’s wells, the ERCB cited strict safety and emergency response requirements enacted after an inquiry into the Lodgepole tragedy. Regardless of eventual characteristics of the new wells, all will be drilled as if they are officially deemed “critical” or the most dangerous conceivable. “Critical sour-gas development continues to occur safely in Alberta, with between 50 and 100 such projects undertaken annually,” the board observed in its ruling.
Protesters, frustrated by only putting extra safety conditions on the drilling program, challenged sour-gas operations as violations of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The legal duel centered on Section 7, that declares: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with principles
of fundamental justice.”
After much testimony by rival expert witnesses, the ERCB concluded that the risks posed by sour-gas drilling, as controlled by its safety code, are still reasonable by today’s standards for activities from construction to busing school children on busy roads in winter. Current community consultation practices give abundant advance notice of industry activities and continuing opportunities to adapt to hazards, the ERCB said. It urged local authorities, including school boards, to learn and spread accurate information.
A score of irate Tomahawk residents, organized as the Rocky Rapids Concerned Citizens, took the case up to the Alberta Court of Appeal. The protest lawsuit failed, with Justice Keith Ritter ruling that the ERCB’s handling of the civil rights complaint was “unassailable.”
Such supportive decisions are routine when annoyed losers of hard-fought cases haul the energy board into court. A 2007 “mistrial,” declared after zealous security staff hired private detectives to snoop on aggressive protesters in a power line case, stood out as a rare lapse.
The 950-employee ERCB is steeped in dealing with conflict as a major theme of its 70-year history. When the agency first opened its doors on July 1, 1938, it was no accident that founding chairman Bill Knode was Alberta’s most highly paid civil servant.
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