Bad Gas on the Border Sours Relations

Press Release
Wildsight
October 4, 2007

‘BP Stinks’ says Montana, Environmentalists; BC Back-pedals

FERNIE, BRITISH COLUMBIA - The issues surrounding the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and Flathead Valley share many sad parallels and BP is a common destructive force in both areas. Grassroots environmental organization Wildsight is launching an anti-coalbed methane (CBM) campaign with a look at the similarities between two treasured transboundary regions in North America.

“It’s ironic that transboundary oil and gas development has Canada putting the shoe on the other foot,” says Casey Brennan, Wildsight’s Southern Rockies Program Manager.

“The Canadian government just about had a fit when the United States looked set to open up ANWR to drilling. Canadians loudly noted ANWR’s drilling impacts to the integrity of our national parks and to wildlife. Now Americans are raising the same concerns about the Flathead Valley and British Columbia is now the uncaring neighbour.”

BP has been actively extracting crude oil on the north slope of Alaska for decades. They are also one of the companies lobbying for ANWR to be opened up to oil and gas extraction. ANWR is adjacent to two Canadian National Parks, Ivvavik and Vuntut, in the Yukon Territory. These parks provide key habitat protection for the sensitive Porcupine Caribou herd. BP also wants to drill for and extract coalbed methane in the Flathead Valley in south-eastern B.C. The Flathead is adjacent to the world’s first peace park — Waterton Glacier International Peace Park, a World Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage Site. The Flathead River flows into Montana where it is designated a ‘Wild and Scenic River‘ and it forms the western boundary of Glacier National Park. The Flathead is home to the highest population density of non-coastal grizzly bears, and boasts the highest diversity of wide ranging carnivores in North America.

BP is seeking to pump water and gas out of the Crowsnest Coalfield, which covers part of the Elk River watershed and the headwaters of the Flathead River. Their conceptual plan shows over one hundred one hectare well pads spread out over five hundred square kilometres, and bristles with dozens of new roads.

BP Canada Energy Company was courted by the Province of British Columbia to answer a request for proposals to drill and extract CBM. The request had been posted following the failure of a tenure auction for a portion of the region. The auction failed to attract any bidders in the summer of 2003 due to massive public opposition to any CBM development.

The provincial government is getting set to initiate a tenure referral process that would grant rights to a vast swath of wilderness without any assessment of the potential cumulative impacts on sensitive wildlife species such as grizzly bears and trout.

“This issue is hot and has the potential to get even hotter than the ANWR debate did a few years back” said Brennan. “The same level of concern exists with environmental groups on both sides of the border.”

Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer has repeatedly expressed concern on the industrialization issue. However, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell recently wrote a terse letter replying to Schweitzer’s concerns, asserting the province’s right to pursue industrial development upstream from its neighbour. Campbell dismissed the Governor’s concerns for water quality and wildlife, and essentially labelled Schweitzer a hypocrite, noting Montana has oil and gas and mining in other areas of the state.

“This is bad public policy,” said Brennan. “B.C. wants to grant drilling rights to BP in an area identified in the province’s own land use plan as ‘Core Grizzly Bear Habitat.’ I can’t believe the provincial government invited BP into the Flathead, given their terrible track record in the ANWR issue. And in terms of hypocrisy, BC needs only to remember their opposition to the Sumas Energy 2 gas fired generator across the border in Washington State. The gas BP would like to extract from the Flathead and Elk watersheds is to be sold as a commodity to the highest bidder and would likely be burnt in electricity facilities similar to what the Sumas Energy 2 would have been like had the B.C. government not fought so hard to successfully stop it.”

BP has had a terrible environmental record at their Prudhoe Bay operation adjacent to ANWR. Over the past few decades BP has been responsible for well over one hundred oil spills in Prudhoe Bay. After being exposed by whistle blowing workers BP admitted to trying to hide illegal underground toxic dumping at night. They paid tens of millions of dollars in fines and plead guilty to multiple federal felony charges. In 2006 BP was responsible for a spill of more than a quarter of a million gallons (one billion litres) of thick crude oil that covered more than two acres before it was discovered at their sprawling Prudhoe Bay production facilities. Four litres (1 gallon) of gasoline (refined or ‘clean’ oil) can contaminate approximately 2.8 million litres (750,000 gallons) of water.

BP launched a major public relations campaign this summer in the Elk Valley, and says they plan to spend one hundred million dollars drilling twenty-five wells while studying baseline conditions during the next five years.

“The B.C. government is silent on this issue at the moment. They are letting BP push their bogus public relations spin and hoping they can get away with selling off an unbelievably huge area for drilling and industrialization. We are going to hold the provincial government accountable for the stewardship of our land and protection of our water and we will expose BP as the bad corporate actor that they are,” said Brennan.

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For more information:
Casey Brennan
Southern Rockies Program Manager, Wildsight
casey@wildsight.ca
250-423-2603 - t
250-423-0402 – c
www.wildsight.ca
www.flathead.ca