It's like a sour gas well about to blow.
I'm talking about the frustration, mistrust and outright hostility that many landowners feel toward Alberta's energy regulator.
The Alberta Energy and Utilities Board's (EUB) hearing into Compton Petroleum Corp.'s application to drill six critical sour gas wells next door to Calgary is nearing the end of its third week.
But it wasn't at the Compton hearing that I saw and heard the anger. It was at a public workshop held in Ma-Me-O Beach at Pigeon Lake northwest of Red Deer.
Entitled Health, Culture and Oil and Gas: Some Human Rights Issues, the workshop was presented by the Canadian Institute of Resources Law based at the University of Calgary and the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre.
The all-day event, held earlier this month, was intended to be an overview of provincial, national and international human rights laws and how they might apply in protecting individual rights and health from damage by intensifying oil and gas development.
But many of the 60 people who showed up came to vent.
Some of them were outspoken critics of the EUB such as Oscar Steiner, a farmer and university graduate student who in 2003 led a successful battle against Manhattan Resources Ltd.'s plan to drill six gas wells in the Ardrossan area in Strathcona County east of Edmonton.
Steiner advised workshop participants to not even bother trying to get their concerns aired before an EUB hearing. "The system just doesn't function," he said.
Instead, Steiner said, go after the media's attention and launch massive letter-writing campaigns aimed at the government.
One workshop participant, who pointed out that the EUB receives about 60 per cent of its annual funding from the oil and gas industry, said: "I see the EUB as an energy entity, not as a government entity."
For many landowners, the EUB's view of energy development "in the public interest" means the majority interest trumps an individual's rights, said workshop moderator Jim Hope-Law, a former director and president of the Canadian Petroleum Law Foundation. "Two wolves and a sheep voting to decide what's for dinner is hardly a democracy."
Tony Yellowbird, like his father and his father before him, lives at Pigeon Lake, a Samson Cree Nation reserve. "The EUB allows these oil companies to trample over this land," he said.
Cliff Whitelock, a Drayton Valley-area rancher whose cattle suffered during the infamous 68-day Lodgepole sour gas well blowout in 1982, complained about how the industry gets to pump precious freshwater down wells to produce more oil, and about how landowners have no say in the amount of financial compensation they receive when wells are drilled on their land.
Janet Keeping, a research associate at the Canadian Institute of Resources Law and a workshop speaker, said there is a growing feeling across Alberta that the balance between energy development and human rights, cultural concerns and the right to health "is out of whack."
Some of that feeling is going to emerge at the Compton hearing. Let's hope the EUB listens and responds in a meaningful way to the public frustration and anger - before they explode.
The EUB could start by hiring a landowners' liaison-inspector, something the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission did in 2003.
Alberta does have a Farmers' Advocate office in Edmonton - one person to handle all manner of complaints from farmers.
But it's time the Calgary- headquartered EUB had at least one independent person responsible for bringing landowners' concerns directly to the energy regulator, somebody who has some clout inside the system to change it.
The federal government's strategy to implement the Kyoto accord is becoming clear. It's called "delay, delay, delay."
Prime Minister Paul Martin noted last week that the climate-change treaty allows countries to catch up and meet their greenhouse gas emissions-reduction target in the second compliance period - after 2012.
Martin's unspoken message is clear. Canada has about as much chance of meeting its Kyoto target within the first compliance period (2008-2012) as the Liberals do of forming the next provincial government in Alberta.
So Ottawa will continue to make a half-hearted effort to reduce emissions during this first period, and then hope Kyoto disappears after that like so much glacial ice.
It's nice having giant Microsoft Corp. in your corner.
WellPoint Systems Inc. gave me a preview of its new Integrated Financial System (IFS) software product that the Calgary-based company launched this week.
The product, the first-ever built upon Microsoft's well-regarded Axapta software specifically for the oil and gas industry, combines a world-class accounting system customized to the industry's needs with a platform for enterprise resource planning and mission-critical applications.
Tom Mawhinney, WellPoint's vice-president of sales and marketing, says the product can support the needs of junior, intermediate and integrated oil and gas companies.
I haven't investigated competing systems, but I was impressed by IFS's comprehensiveness, ease of operation and flexibility. It's worth checking out.
(Mark Lowey can be reached at mark@businessedge.ca)
