But preparations are underway at the ERCB for acceleration of unconventional gas activity in Alberta, even though the board does not make guesses about when the surge will begin. “We really don’t know how long the economic cycle is going to last,” says McFadyen. “We’re working on a number of projects with long timelines.”

The ERCB’s conservation expertise, in preventing waste and obtaining the greatest possible value for provincially owned resources, is transferable over to the new forms of gas production, he says. Additional work includes review of unconventional gas deposits by the Alberta Geological Survey, a scholarly arm of the ERCB. Airborne exploration for clean ground water requiring protection is being done in partnership with the provincial environment department.

Not all the board’s attention focuses on technical and scientific issues or the natural environment. Relations between the energy industry and its human environment are also a top priority.
The highs on the economic cycle gave Alberta a case of “rurbanization,” McFadyen says. The term describes converging trends of industrial expansion rubbing up against population growth that spreads urban or suburban lifestyles and attitudes into formerly agricultural or empty rural areas. The pattern is a recipe for friction over drilling, pipelines, hazardous materials, traffic, noise, odors and other side-effects of oil and gas activity.

“There is much more interface going on between industry and the population,” the ERCB chairman says. Rurbanization changes the human landscape into country residential, retirement and
recreational communities. They have lower tolerance for industry than farmers who relied on winter oilfield jobs and family contracting firms to top up agri­cultural incomes.

“People who moved out into the country went there because they wanted to get away from it all.” Living with seismic exploration, drilling rigs, pipeline and plant construction and production of “sour” gas or oil steeped in hazardous hydrogen sulphide was not part of the plan. “Now all of a sudden the world is catching up with them,” McFadyen observes.

ERCB responses include increased support for “synergy groups” of industry and landowners, alternative dispute resolution programs such as mediation, strengthened board field offices and community education. Alberta’s oilfield watchdog aims to teach all concerned their rights and responsibility.

By responsibility, McFadyen means citizens have a duty to participate in the “quasi-judicial,” law court-like process of making decisions and putting conditions on oil and gas projects. “If you have a concern, you have to make sure you’re exercising it appropriately on your own behalf,” the ERCB chairman says. “You’ve got rights. We’ll tell you those. You help us by telling us about those rights and concerns.”

His agency’s legal mandate has not changed. Cases must be decided using evidence and facts accumulated by formal due process that recognizes rights of all participants. ERCB reviews and hearings are not popular opinion polls.

Only Albertans who are directly or adversely affected have power to make the ERCB hold hearings on projects by contesting them. That has been a rule enforced by the board’s legislated mandate and the law courts for decades. But McFadyen says the process will continue to include a feature the board calls its “town hall,” meaning time set aside to hear from people who do not fit the legal description of interveners. “We try to be as fair as we can.”

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