Extremists are ordinary people with their backs against a wall, an ex-RCMP sergeant is quoted as saying in Andrew Nikiforuk’s new book.

There are far more extraordinary than ordinary characters in Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig’s War Against Big Oil.

But the thread that connects them – oilpatch execs, farmers, police and industry regulators – is the campaign of ecoterrorism, subterfuge and botched investigations that catapulted the issue of sour-gas emissions and flaring practices in northern Alberta into the international press in the late 1990s.

“This is the quintessential Alberta tale,” says Nikiforuk, a veteran Calgary-based freelance journalist and contributor to publications including Report on Business Magazine, Canadian Business, and Business Edge. “And it’s the dark side of our wealth that we don’t want to talk about.”

Saboteurs (Macfarlane Walter & Ross) is a Shakespearian-sized tale that documents Wiebo Ludwig’s campaign against the sour-gas wells he said were poisoning his family, and a seismic series of events involving blown-up wellheads, sabotaged pipelines and nail-studded rural roads which provoked frustrated RCMP officers and one company to blow up their own wellsite shack to try to catch the culprit.

Based on public records, extensive interviews and the Ludwig family diary, the book tracks more than seven years of suspicion and unease in the Hythe and Beaverlodge areas.

Calgary writer Andrew Nikiforuk says Ludwig has disapproved of his book. "He wanted to be lionized, and I refused to do that."

After hundreds of vandalism incidents against targets including Alberta Energy Company, Norcen, Suncor and others, Ludwig was convicted of possession of explosives and mischief in April 2000 and handed 28 months in the minimum-security Grande Cache prison.

The Trickle Creek patriarch will be out of jail on statutory release on Nov. 14.

Nikiforuk covered the story as a journalist for various Canadian publications including the Globe and Mail, and began researching his book in the fall of 1998 after the summer’s bombing campaign in the Peace region.

“At the time, I couldn’t believe that an industry would take (so many) hits of vandalism and it wouldn’t be front-page news somewhere,” he recalls.

AEC president Gwyn Morgan, whose company played a key role in helping RCMP stage an oilwell explosion to help establish the credibility of a Trickle Creek informant, declined to talk to Nikiforuk for the book, “which I found amazing,” the author says.

“Here is a company that sustained more than $10 million worth of damage, that employed a security force of up to 40 people in the field, and a pivotal event in the history of the province. And they didn’t want to talk about it,” he says. “You would think they’d want to tell their side of the story.”

“I think there are a lot of tales of sabotage that are missing. And a lot of threats are missing . . . ”

But AEC disputes Nikiforuk’s accounting. While he hasn’t read the book, company public affairs chief Dick Wilson says he doesn’t have to.

“The reviews that I’ve read don’t give me any confidence in its ability to properly reflect the situation as it evolved,” said Wilson, who is portrayed in the book as the “excitable” AEC media spokesman who berated reporters for giving Ludwig a platform.

Wilson told Business Edge that “there is absolutely no truth” to Nikiforuk’s $10-million figure. “It’s sensationalism intended to, if you pardon the expression, blow things out of proportion,” he added.

AEC didn’t wish to discuss the Ludwig affair for Nikiforuk’s book because the company considers the issue closed, Wilson said. “We turned the page, and carried on with our lives . . . doing our business, which is delivering an energy supply safely and responsibly to those who need it.”

The book includes a chapter on the killing of Patrick Kent, the vice-president of Calgary-based KB Resources who was shot to death in 1998 near Bowden following a dispute over the cleanup of a contaminated oil well on leased property.

Area rancher Wayne Roberts was sentenced to life in prison for the killing. The shooting death of 16-year-old Hythe teen Karman Willis, killed on Ludwig’s Trickle Creek property in 1999 while joyriding in a truck with a group of friends, is also chronicled. No charges have been laid in her death.

Nikiforuk says the oil and gas companies realize Ludwig had a legitimate grievance over the effects of hydrogen sulphide-laced emissions on his family.

“Privately, they conceded that Ludwig had issues, publicly they said he was a religious wacko and out to lunch. That was the way industry dealt with it,” he says.

“But they still haven’t squarely come to terms with this issue, and until they do, they are going to have more and more problems operating in rural Alberta.

“There’s every indication that the tension between landowners and the oil and gas industry is just increasing,” Nikiforuk continues.

“It didn’t end with Patrick Kent. And the great marriage between landowners and the oilpatch that has helped make Alberta as wealthy as it is, is in trouble.” But the industry sees the situation somewhat more optimistically.

David Luff, vice-president of environment and operations for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, says important lessons were learned from the Ludwig affair.

“The industry has done an excellent job in improving its performance around emissions, and flaring is a good example of that,” he says.

“We know and understand that the public is concerned about flaring. We worked with the Clean Air Strategic Alliance to set goals to reduce our flaring in 1997 . . . we’ve reduced our flare emissions now by 38 per cent, compared to that point in time. We’re well ahead of the targets that we’ve set.”

Better communication has also helped bring landowners and industry closer together to resolve disputes, but the jury is still out on any links between emissions and animal and human health, says Luff.

“The research to this point in time has been inconclusive,” he says.

“But, as an industry, we’ve been funding research on human and animal health studies. We’ve been conducting research as it relates to flare technology, and research on microturbines to capture some of the gas that was being flared to capture it to use to generate electricity.”

A new mediation process has been adopted by oil companies to try to defuse potential disputes with land owners.

The Appropriate Dispute Resolution system was launched earlier this year to provide a collaborative solution to finding common ground.

The EUB has also adopted several recommendations from a provincial public safety and sour-gas advisory committee, which stressed the need for more research on health effects from sour-gas exposure and flaring. But results from health studies into the long-term effects of flaring on humans and animals will take years, says Nikiforuk.

It’s no secret where the writer’s sympathies lie – Saboteurs is dedicated “to all downwinders.”

But the charismatic preacher from Trickle Creek is one downwinder who isn’t impressed. “He did not like the book,” says Nikiforuk. “His reaction was one of great disappointment. He wanted to be lionized, and I refused to do that.”

Luff says the industry welcomes further public debate on the issues surrounding Alberta’s sour-gas industry.

“If this book will help in getting people to the table again to begin to discuss and understand what the issues and concerns are and find mechanisms to resolve them, that will be a success,” he says.

“It’s one thing to talk about an issue, and another thing to act. Our industry is proud of its accomplishments in that regard, and I believe that our landowners are as well.”

Ludwig defends any of his actions as justifiable defence, saying he didn’t believe in vengeance or violence, says Nikiforuk.

“But he did believe in the right of a person, who when placed in a corner, had a right to defend (himself),” he says.

Of the events chronicled in his book, Nikiforuk adds: “I think these events could happen again in rural Alberta, largely because no limits have been placed on sour-gas activity and development.

“Nothing has changed that way. Every week a family is displaced or harmed by sour-gas activity in the province. And because it happens in rural Alberta, it is hidden.”

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