B.C.'s oil and gas laws panned

Last updated Jun 23 2005 04:05 PM PDT
CBC News

CBC NEWS – A report by the Sierra Legal Defence Fund says B.C.is doing a poor job of regulating the booming oil and gas industry in northeastern B.C.

Premier Campbell donned a hard hat during a visit to the area during the election campaign, proclaiming that a natural gas rig had the "smell of money" to it.

* FROM MAY 11, 2005: Campbell tours energy hot spot

The group says says that prosperity comes with a price – that landowners' rights, First Nations and environmental protection are all taking a back seat to the interests of industry.

The report gives B.C. a failing grade for not protecting landowners from companies drilling oil and gas wells, noting they have no right to be consulted before oil and gas rights are sold out from under them.

And it says traditional First Nations territories are being carved up by the industry.

* LINK: Sierra Legal Defence Fund backgrounder

Sierra Legal Defence also notes that B.C.'s laws don't measure up to those in Alberta. And spokesperson Tim Howard warns of what may happen if the province doesn't start to do a better job regulating the petroleum industry

"We're looking at transforming northeast B.C. from a beautiful landscape of wildlife and a wide range of habitat into this kind of chopped up patchwork where there's going to be little toxic sumps."

* LINK: Executive summary of report (pdf)

But B.C. Energy Minister Richard Neufeld says the report is absolutely wrong, and that most residents of northeastern B.C. are happy to have good jobs.

"No, we're not poisoning the ground; no, we're not ruining it. We live up there. Tim doesn't. I live there, and there's no way I would tolerate that."

Neufeld says it's also not true to suggest the government doesn't allow landowners to appeal the approval of new wells.

Blah blah blah blah...no matter how BC regulates these industries, environmentalists will always come back with negative comments. That's just the nature of the beast.

Frigen hippies
David Sasuki ( did I spell that right ) is the worst one of them all.
He came to my Elem. school when I was but a small child and told us how 100,000 square KM were beeing destroyed of rainforest everyday. Well , hey asshole the whole world including the oceans have been burt or cut down 3 times over ,at least by now so why are we all still so concerned about it . ass hole . when all else fails , make things up, right Green Peace ? hippies.

Frigen hippies
David Sasuki ( did I spell that right ) is the worst one of them all.
He came to my Elem. school when I was but a small child and told us how 100,000 square KM were beeing destroyed of rainforest everyday. Well , hey asshole the whole world including the oceans have been burt or cut down 3 times over ,at least by now so why are we all still so concerned about it . ass hole . when all else fails , make things up, right Green Peace ? hippies.

Are you sure you are still not in Elementary school? Because you need something called "oxygen" and "clean water" to live. And both of these depend on forests/plant life. I fail to see how everything has been destroyed "3 times over," perhapse you are referring to the past ice age(s)? If everything was destroyed at once, nobody could stay alive.

yeah thats my point , thanks captin obveious . I m not the one who said everything was destroyed three times over .That was Dr. Sasuki , not me. Your ideas that with out Clean air and water we would all die, inovative. I think we all know that too.

what Im saying is that if people like Sasuki where in charge they would have us believe that we were responsable for the Dinosaurs dying off among many other fabrications. With people like the Good Doctor running the show nothing productive or to do with industry would ever get done .

Rhino, did you mean David Suzuki?

http://www.cstd.ca/images/Suzuki2.jpg

Yes, what he said is that the ammount of rain forest that had been destroyed every day was in the area of 100,000 square KM.
this has been taking place since the early 80's . If you multiply 100,000 km by the ammount of time gone by you get ...
the total volume of the entire planet destroyed around 3 times over . That is why I dont believe a thing Tree hugers say , The make things up that are completey un true. Hence our planet beeing destroyed 3 times over .

Thank you very much ,

Actually, he said 1 acre is destroyed every second (http://www.sacredbalance.com/web/level2.tpl?var1=12&var2=2), which is:
1 acre * 60 * 60 * 24 = 86,400 acres per day.
Considering "Forests worldwide cover some 3.9 billion Hectares"
3.9 billion hectares = 9.63710988 × 10^9 acres
and
86,400 * 365 * 20 years = 6.3072 x 10^8 acres

Considering trees do grow back, and not all of that area is clear cut, it sounds like something quite reasonable, and is not close to 3 times over.

So what do you think then, should we abandon our oil exploration ?
I may not have the best opinion and I sure as hell am not right all the time about everything but I'm sorry I dont like tree huggers . Im for progress , if it is kept in check.

Definately. We should, however, introduce a law that requires 20% of all oil drilled in Canada to be sold within Canada. This will make sure that we can keep the economy running in terms of transportation and the cost of fuel. The USA already has this sort of law for refineries in California, so it should not be a problem. I am against this sort of driling in national/provincial parks or any environmentally sensitive place though.

/\ Good God! Sound like the NEP! Holy shit, don't even think about it!

Do you realize what the NEP did to Alberta!? You'll be surprised how fresh this is in many people's minds in Alberta.

I believe Zivan56 is right , we should put a 20 % margin in for our selves to lower over alll fuel costs .