Vancouver Sun -- Make Sacred Headwaters gas drill ban permanent: eco-groups
,December 6th, 2011
Excerpted from the 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 fueled. 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.
