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December 06 2011 » News Clippings » Vancouver Sun

Make Sacred Headwaters gas drill ban permanent: eco-groups

Make Sacred Headwaters gas drill ban permanent: eco-groups By Gordon Hamilton


Pictured is the Sacred Headwaters region of Northwestern B.C., Divide Mountain where waters from its slopes and Mount Klappen form the source of Stikine, Nass, and Skeena rivers. Environmental groups opposed to a Shell Canada proposal to drill for coal-bed methane in the headwaters are calling for an existing provincial moratorium on drilling in the region to be extended indefinitely.
Photograph by: Vance Culbert, Vancouver Sun

Environmental groups opposed to a Shell Canada proposal to drill for coal bed methane in the headwaters of the Skeena, Nass and Stikine rivers are calling for an existing provincial moratorium on drilling in the region to be extended indefinitely.

In 2008, prompted by strong regional opposition to the gas extraction program, the province placed a four-year moratorium on Shell’s gas-drilling tenure in the region, called the Klap-pen Basin, but referred to as the Sacred Headwaters by environ-mental activists and first nations. With that moratorium set to expire in 2012, ForestEthics and the Skeena Watershed Coalition say the province risks putting its natural gas industry under the environmental spotlight if it allows Shell to go ahead.

The Klappen controversy is one of two energy development plans for the northwest coming under increasingly strong opposition as the region braces for an unprecedented resources boom. Communities, first nations and environmentalists are also lining up against Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline plan.

ForestEthics spokesman Andrew Frank said in an inter-view that up until now, the B.C. gas industry has been spared the type of reaction Enbridge’s oilsands pipeline has fuelled. The same arguments behind the provincial moratorium are still true today and the province is putting at risk the entire natural gas industry if it allows this one development to go ahead, he said. “The Sacred Headwaters would be the poster child for what’s wrong with B.C. regulations,” he said.

The eco-groups say that under current regulations, Shell can drill 4,000 wells and clear thousands of kilometres of roads. The groups want Premier Christy Clark to make the four-year moratorium permanent. In a television interview one year ago, then-energy minister Blair Lekstrom said the moratorium is coming off in December 2012.

The Klappen Basin is rich in wildlife and one of the rivers that originates there, the Skeena, supports a $110-million-a-year fishery, said ForestEthics campaigner Karen Tam Wu.

She said gas drilling would require a network of roads in one of the province’s last wilderness areas as well as the potential for gas extraction to result in pollution to the three rivers.

“Permanently banning coal bed methane in the Sacred Headwaters would be an important signal to British Columbians that the government is serious about responsible development of the province’s unconventional gas resources. If the government allows coal bed methane to be developed in a pristine wilderness like the Sacred Headwaters, it would signal that B.C. truly is the Wild West where nowhere is off-limits.”

Shell Canada received the provincial land tenure in 2004 to explore for coal bed methane. The province granted the tenure after Shell signed a memorandum of understanding with the leaders of the Tahl-tan First Nation. But strong community opposition to the drilling resulted in a change in leadership. The Tahltan began blockading roads in 2007.

Calls to Shell Canada were not returned.

ghamilton@vancouversun.com

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Make+Sacred+Headwaters+drill+permanent+groups/5816987/story.html#ixzz1gRSt9N8y

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