Questerre Energy Corporation

Borrowed this link from 'Bombibitt' on the Hegnar forum. Interesting reading and obviously enormous potential implications for QEC. Fingers crossed...

http://www.ipolitics.ca/2014/04/28/the-future-of-fracking-rules-could-be-determined-this-week/

Any interest by the federal government in regulating the fracking boom across Canada could be determined by a landmark report to be released this week.

Ottawa has staked any requirement to regulate the game-changing petroleum extraction method on a study by the Council of Canadian Academies, an arm’s-length scientific advisory body the federal government sometimes turns to for independent advice.

The study, which the CCA says will be released on Thursday, won’t necessarily lead to increased regulation – its aim is to give Ottawa an overview of the scientific literature on fracking. But it could potentially impact the direction of the politically charged debate over fracking in some rural parts of Canada.

“The release of this report can either make people more or less uncertain about whether fracking is environmentally benign or not,” said Paul Boothe, a former deputy minister at Environment Canada. “If it is generally reassuring about fracking, about the state of knowledge and what that knowledge is, then that may reassure people in other parts of the country. The reverse could be true as well.”

Fracking, a nickname for an oil and gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing, has sparked violent protests in rural New Brunswick and moratoriums in Quebec and Nova Scotia. The method, which uses fluid to crack rock formations and release oil and gas, is also the backbone of British Columbia’s plans for a liquefied natural gas export industry.

While useful in extracting a number of unconventional petroleum resources, the one of principal interest in Canada is shale gas.

According to a Library of Parliament report from January, the Canadian Society for Unconventional Resources has said Canada could have anywhere between 343 and 819 trillion cubic feet of marketable shale gas. The National Energy Board, in a report released last November, estimates the Montney shale formation in northeastern B.C. and northwestern Alberta, could have up 449 trillion cubic feet of marketable gas.

Most of the regulatory approvals for fracking are up to the provinces, including water usage permits and safety requirements over well design. But several aspects fall under federal legislation, hence Ottawa’s decision in 2012 to draw up a shale gas action plan and commission the CCA study.

Both the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), which regulates the use of toxic substances, and the Fisheries Act, which protects fisheries, are potentially impacted by fracking, according to a ministerial memo to then Environment Minister Peter Kent obtained by the Council of Canadians under an access-to-information request in 2013.

Also of interest to the federal government are greenhouse gas emissions from the shale gas industry, which Canada is obligated to curb under international agreements.

Under CEPA, the minister can demand operators who use a toxic substance to provide information on its properties and regulate their handling. A major issue among fracking opponents has been the disclosure of chemicals used in fracking fluid. CEPA has provisions that allow commercially sensitive information about these chemicals to remain secret to the public as long as they are disclosed to the regulator.

“That’s kind of the tension within the industry,” said Boothe, who left his government position in 2012 and is now a professor at the Ivey School of Business.

According to Boothe, Environment Canada was looking into whether to regulate fracking fluids under CEPA when he left his post.

Neither the Canadian Society for Unconventional Resources nor the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), the country’s largest oil and gas industry group, could say whether any member firms had been asked to provide fracking fluid information under CEPA.

“I can’t think of any,” said David Pryce, a vice-president of operations at CAPP.

The industry will have its own reasons for watching the CCA study this week. CAPP launched a series of standards on fracking around the same time Ottawa commissioned the study in 2012. All 100 or so members of CAPP have to agree to the guidelines, but this is the first year members have to report to CAPP about following the guidelines, said Pryce.

“At this stage, it’s generalized in the sense of ‘Are you using the practices, yes or no?’” he said. “At the same time, we are looking at the data around water usage – as an example – and we will be acquiring that information in subsequent years as well.”

Boothe, the former deputy environment minister, felt the CAPP guidelines fell short of what the federal rules demand.

“That was something of interest to the current government because they’re always looking at alternatives to direct regulation,” he said. “But it’s safe to say that the initial proposal by the industry fell short of where Environment Canada would have gone in terms of disclosure on the make-up of fracking liquids.”

Complicating matters is a provincial effort to have fracking fluids disclosed under a program called Fracfocus. Organized by the B.C. Oil & Gas Commission and using the same methodology as a similar program in the U.S., Fracfocus allows the public to look up fracking wells and read Material Safety Data Sheets (a standardized document that lists the fluid ingredients) for each well.

Currently, only B.C., Alberta and the Northwest Territories have signed up for Fracfocus, but New Brunswick may join soon, according to Pryce. CAPP’s guidelines, which don’t require the disclosure of chemicals, do require companies use Fracfocus, said Pryce.

If the jurisdiction doesn’t have Fracfocus, the member company must publicly disclose the Material Safety Data Sheets some other way, “whether it’s a website disclosure or some other vehicle,” he said.

SWN Resources Canada, whose fracking operations in New Brunswick sparked opposition from aboriginal communities living near their drill sites last fall, discloses a general list of fracking fluid ingredients online.

“Information on the drill fluid component materials and their Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) will be readily available at the site,” says the environmental impact assessment for SWN’s Bronson project site, posted to the government’s website.

The federal and provincial governments are undertaking a number of other studies on fracking, including the method’s impacts on seismicity and groundwater.