The Basics
Coalbed Methane (CBM) is the gas that canaries were traditionally used to detect in underground coal mines. Methane is ‘natural’ gas which is trapped in coal seams and “adsorbed” or held in coal seams by water pressure. The water usually found in these porous seams has to be removed before the CBM can “desorb” from the coal and bubble up to a well on the surface.
Many wells are used to penetrate the seams with enough fractures to remove water quickly and to release economically viable quantities of the gas. As a result well densities are much higher than with traditional natural gas. The required infrastructure for CBM fields is also more intense and the impact on wildlife is devastating. Scientists have found that full field CBM development destroys wildlife habitat.
British Columbia’s southern Rocky Mountains is not an appropriate area for CBM extraction. The resulting industrialization of the landscape would destroy critical wildlife habitat and cut off the last connection for key species like threatened grizzly bears from more abundant northern populations.
The Threats
BP Canada, the subsidiary of British Petroleum which is one of the biggest companies in the world, has envisioned a vast CBM field that would cover more than three hundred square kilometres covering significant portions of the Elk watersheds. If BP’s “Mist Mountain” CBM proposal is allowed to proceed by the provincial government a sprawling network of 100 x 100 meter well pads, service roads, waste water and gas pipelines and noisy compression and processing stations would industrialize the heart of our wild Rockies. BP Canada intends to spend $100 million in the next five years the vast majority of which will pay for the drilling of up to twenty five wells. There will also be money for public relations and some environmental work.
UPDATE: BP recently sold this project to Apache Energy Corp from Texas. We will post updated information when it becomes available.
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Meanwhile Canada’s largest independent oil and gas producer Encana and their managing partner Strom Cat Energy are drilling and pumping gas and water at their pilot operation near the headwaters of the Elk River. Encana’s thirty thousand hectare lease has had over twenty wells drilled in the last seven years. Storm Cat is touting the potential of this ‘play’ on their website where they say they will make a decision weather to go to commercial production by the end of 2007. The water produced from these wells is dumped into a tributary of the Elk River and has been proven to be toxic to fish. Despite numerous incidents of failing government required bioassays, which are toxicity tests preformed on baby rainbow trout, the surface disposal of this toxic produced water has been 'grandfathered' by the British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission.
