Stephen Rees's blog

Photo credit: Flux Lab, St. Francis Xavier University

This is one of those announcements that did not surprise me at all. I have long suspected that BC was not counting all the methane that got released here. Now the work of the David Suzuki Foundation confirms my suspicions. The rest of this post is simply copied from their email today.

Allowing methane to go into the air is one of the worst things we can do if we want to stop climate change.

Methane is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide and is responsible for 25 per cent of the already observed changes to Earth’s climate.

That’s why we’ve shed light on one of the biggest sources of methane emissions in B.C.: fugitive emissions from the province’s fracking industry.

Yesterday, we released Fugitives in our midst: Investigating fugitive emissions from abandoned, suspended and active oil and gas wells in the Montney Basin in northeastern British Columbia.

The report shows of 178 oil and gas sites investigated:

• 35 per cent of inactive wells had measurable and, in some cases, significant methane leakage; and,
• More than 85 per cent of active gas wells vent methane gas directly into the environment daily

The new research corroborates findings from a spring 2017 study by the Foundation and St. Francis Xavier University, which found that methane emissions from B.C.’s oil and gas industry are at least 2.5 times higher than industry and government report.

This work has already helped show Canadians that fugitive methane emissions in the oil and gas industry are much higher than anyone previously anticipated.

The report makes additional recommendations to reduce and eliminate fugitive emissions, including asking government to:

• Mandate that all oil and gas companies immediately undertake leak detection and repair, starting with the sites we identified
• Immediately develop and implement recommendations for leak detection, infrastructure replacement and repair, and transparent reporting
• Make industry provide resources for on-the-ground monitoring and enforcement
• Move forward with the government’s commitment in the Confidence and Supply Agreement to apply the carbon tax to the oil and gas industry’s methane pollution

The federal government’s draft methane regulations are currently out for public consultation. Final regulations are expected this year.

What you can do and how you can help:

• Read the report
• Take action – tell Canada’s leaders to clean up Canada’s fracking mess
• Donate – make more victories like these possible