The public has a right to know what chemicals are being put into the ground by petroleum companies, says the government of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Conoco Phillips is using a process called hydraulic fracturing or fracking to extract natural gas there.
Thousands of litres of chemical and millions of litres of water are injected underground at very high pressure to create fractures in the rock and free the gas. While the company must disclose the chemicals it is using in two horizontal wells in Tulita, it can exclude chemical that are considered to be “trade secrets.”
The advocacy group Council of Canadians has been campaigning against fracking because of “its high water use, its high carbon emissions, its impacts on human health, the disruption it causes to wildlife, and the danger it poses to groundwater and local drinking water.”
Fracking projects have boomed in Canada and the US over the last five years and are seen as a cheaper and abundant alternative to oil.
“Northerners…right to know”
“We as northerners have a right to know what the best practices are, that we will know clearly what we are allowing industry to put in the ground to assist with the shale gas production. It’s an [eminently] reasonable request,” said Michael Miltenberger, minister of environment and natural resources in the Northwest Territories.
He said a government discussion paper to guide regulators on fracking in the territories has been in the works for months.
He hopes those guidelines are ready for public review this fall.
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