Inside an explosive situation

WENDY STUECK AND MARK HUME
Globe and Mail
October 25, 2008

Cattle rancher Christine Mortensen stands near a flare from an EnCana compressor site next to her property that she says is giving her headaches. (John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail)

TOMSLAKE, B.C., VANCOUVER — For Christine Mortensen, it's the headaches. Ms. Mortensen and her husband run a cattle operation near Tomslake in northeastern B.C. and live across a gravel road from an EnCana compressor site that, on occasion, flares gas 24 hours a day.

At those times, Ms. Mortensen is plagued by headaches that sap her energy and that she's convinced are related to emissions from the EnCana stack.

So she can imagine how someone might be frustrated enough by a gas operation to want to blow it into smithereens. Imagine – but not understand.

“What's blowing up a pipeline going to accomplish?” Ms. Mortensen said in a recent interview near her home. Like many other residents in the area, she is frightened and angered by two attacks this month that targeted EnCana pipelines, leaving behind craters in the earth and the realization that the results could have been much worse.

“They're here to stay,” said Ms. Mortensen, whose home is within walking distance of several wells and pipelines. “They're not going away. What we have to do is find some way to live with it.”

That won't be easy. This month's explosions are under investigation by the RCMP; police made an arrest on Thursday, but it's not yet clear if it ties in to the investigation.

In any case, the bombings highlight a rift between a profitable industry and local residents who say their land has been despoiled and their concerns ignored. EnCana says it works hard to build relationships with landowners and others in communities where it operates.

At the heart of the conflict is the reality that in British Columbia, as in the rest of Canada, landowners do not own subsurface rights to minerals, oil or gas beneath their property. The split between what's under and above ground typically doesn't matter much to those who live in towns and cities. But it can become the stuff of nightmares for those in rural areas.

In the Peace River district, landowners such as Rick Koechl have watched with alarm as wells popped up in pastures and pipelines crisscrossed the region like spider webs.

Companies have been drilling for oil and gas in the district since the 1920s. But most of the activity has occurred in recent decades and has been especially busy since 2003, when the Liberal government unveiled an Oil and Gas Development Strategy for the Heartlands that included tax breaks to spur more drilling.

A teacher in Fort St. John, Mr. Koechl lives along Old Hope Road, about eight kilometres northwest of the city. With other area residents, he's been lobbying for increased setbacks – the minimum distance that wells, pipelines and other facilities must be from homes – since 2003.

To date, he's gotten nowhere. “The response we've had has been a resounding silence,” Mr. Koechl said.

Sour gas is natural gas that contains hydrogen sulfide, which has a characteristic rotten-egg smell at low concentrations and, at higher concentrations, can kill a person in a matter of seconds. Current regulations allow sour-gas wells to be as close as 100 metres to homes.

The province last year said it would review setbacks as part of its new energy plan. But no new guidelines have been announced, and others share Mr. Koechl's frustration.

In Kelly Lake, a native community just inside the British Columbia border with Alberta and about 50 kilometres south of Dawson Creek, there is so much oil patch traffic going through the community that people have started talking about moving, says spokesman Cliff Calliou.

But nobody knows where to go.

“In the last 10 years, it's changed dramatically here, really dramatically. There is no privacy any more,” Mr. Calliou said. “Anywhere you go, there's a road or a pipeline or a well site, in any direction that you go from the community.”

Kelly Lake residents last summer put up a blockade to protest against heavy traffic and the lack of an emergency response plan.

Some members of the community also objected to the location of EnCana's Steeprock gas plant, a $60-million processing facility opened with fanfare in 2006 a few kilometres north of Kelly Lake. RCMP and EnCana representatives met with Kelly Lake residents last Tuesday, looking for help in finding the pipeline saboteur.

On Thursday, members of the RCMP's anti-terrorist Integrated National Security Enforcement Team travelled to Alberta to arrest Ian Gladue, a 21-year-old Kelly Lake man wanted on outstanding B.C. warrants. Mr. Gladue is in custody in Dawson Creek and expected to appear in court on Monday. The warrants related to uttering threats, sexual assault, obstruction and breach of conditions.

No new charges have been requested and the RCMP have not said if the man is a suspect or person of interest in relation to the bombings.

Whoever is attacking the pipelines is putting everyone at risk, Mr. Calliou said.

“People are worried about it,” he said, adding that some residents have curtailed traditional activities such as hunting and picking berries while the investigation is under way.

“You have a fear [a pipeline explosion] could happen while you are out there. And of course what is your protection if something did happen out there and you're way out in the bush?”

EnCana has heightened security at some of its operations and the RCMP is also patrolling the area, while emphasizing that it's impossible to have an officer at every crossroad.

In Dawson Creek, it's business as usual, with trucks rolling in and out of town and hotels and restaurants hopping with oil-patch workers. Nearly everybody in the region has at least some connection to the industry. Ms. Mortensen and her husband, for example, complement their ranch operation with a machine shop that gets much of its business from oil companies.

Further north, the Doig River First Nation has its own service company, Doig River Energy, and counts on the oil and gas industry for jobs and training for its young people.

But the band is frustrated by a system that treats each well as a separate entity, said band manager Warren Reade. The band estimates there are about 5,000 wells in the area it considers its traditional territory. Each new proposal unfolds against a backdrop of other wells, pending new mines and a resurrected proposal for the Site C dam on the Peace River.

“This is something that the [Oil and Gas Commission] won't deal with, or the companies,” Mr. Reade said.

An example of the tensions between industry and landowners can be found in a letter Arthur Hadland, a seed-farm operator in the Fort St. John area, wrote to a pipeline company in September.

Mr. Hadland complained to officials of the company, which was seeking a pipeline route across his land, that his family was tired of the “dictatorial tone” the company was using.

“Our experiences with your company and hired representatives have exposed us to bullying, disrespectful, and presumptive actions,” he wrote. “I and my family will no longer allow ourselves to be exposed to bullying behaviour and will iterate that your company and your hired representatives are not welcome on our property.”

Gwen Johansson, a representative of a group called Custodians of the Peace Country Society, said many landowners are upset about the lack of control they have over oil and gas activity.

Meetings with government and industry representatives will take place in Vancouver next week to try to work out a new surface leasing policy, she said. Until that's in place, frustrations are bound to be high because landowners feel the oil and gas industry holds all the cards, she added.

Still, people shake their heads over the sabotage, saying there is no excuse for putting workers and residents at risk.

“I've been around here for 35 years and I know a lot of the farm people and the rural people and I just don't think any of them would take this kind of action,” said Paul Gevatkoff, a city councillor in Dawson Creek and president of South Peace Oilmen's Association.

“Because what they are doing is, if they consider oil and gas a problem, they are exacerbating it.

“I think it's somebody who's got an axe to grind or somebody who's just got loose marbles and they think it is a lark.”

Speculating on a motive for the bombings is pointless, Mr. Gevatkoff said. His short answer, when people ask about the issue, is: “It's illegal. It's dangerous and whoever is doing it, I don't know what his motives are. But it should be stopped.”

EnCana British Columbia Gas Pipelines in Service After Bombings

Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- EnCana Corp., Canada's biggest natural gas producer, said pipelines in British Columbia damaged in separate bombings earlier this month have been repaired and shipments on them have resumed.

A 12-inch pipe able to send 60 million cubic feet of gas a day, and an 8-inch line, moving 40 million a day, returned to service over the past few days after testing, Alan Boras, a spokesman for the Calgary-based company, said in an interview.

Investigators from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police continue to probe the explosions on the lines, which carry sour natural gas. Sour gas contains hydrogen sulfide and can be deadly if inhaled. The explosions happened near Dawson Creek, British Columbia, about 890 kilometers northwest of Calgary.

The pipelines are in a remote region that's difficult to monitor. The company hasn't received any direct demands, Boras said last week.

Two processing plants in the region were able to continue operations, taking gas from other lines, the company said. The second blast occurred at a junction where pipelines come from below ground for short distances.

A hunter discovered the first explosion on Oct. 12 on a 12- inch line on the same pipeline network and police believe it happened the previous night. The second explosion was discovered Oct. 16 by pipeline workers.

To contact the reporters on this story: Reg Curren in Calgary at rcurren@bloomberg.net.