Cattle rancher Judy Nelson thought her battle with the sour-gas industry was over three years ago. But now she and her neighbours face another fight over one of the most contentious pieces of real estate in Alberta.
The land, near the tiny ranching community of Maycroft about 120 kilometres south of Calgary, is called the Whaleback. The ecologically sensitive montane region is named for rolling hills that rise from the prairie grass like the backs of giant whales.
Nelson, her neighbours and environmental groups fought a five-year battle to protect the Whaleback starting in 1994, when Amoco Canada Petroleum Co. proposed drilling a sour gas well in the region.
Amoco retreated after provincial regulators turned down its well.
In 1999, the provincial government designated a 28,755-hectare park in the Whaleback that is off limits to oil and gas exploration and other industrial activity.
But now Polaris Resources Ltd. and Ricks Nova Scotia Co., both privately held companies in Calgary, want to drill a Level 4 critical sour gas adjacent to the Whaleback. Level 4 is the province’s highest designation for sour-gas wells in terms of well size and potential risk from poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas.
Nelson and her family’s cattle ranch would be the closest neighbour, within two kilometres of a huge well predicted to flow sour gas at a maximum 200 million cubic feet a day.
“We’re not interested in seeing this industrial development in this area,” Nelson says. “Nobody is in favour of it.”
Maycroft’s ranches are designated as provincial “Heritage Rangeland,” in recognition that carefully managed grazing has kept the montane ecosystem intact, Nelson notes.
But John Maher, president of Polaris Resources, has a different view of the Whaleback.
Amoco ran into strong opposition and regulatory hurdles because it wanted to build a wellsite access road into the heart of the Whaleback, Maher says. But with Polaris’s proposed well, he notes, “we are outside of the protected boundary, on privately held mineral rights.”
Access to the wellsite would be reached just off an existing gravel road that’s used by area residents, Maher says. And there is already other industrial activity in the area, such as logging, he adds.
But Nelson, who listened to Polaris’s plans at a recent public meeting in Maycroft, said the company will have to haul in a major drilling rig for such a large well, requiring several tractor-trailer loads.
That will mean building at least another one kilometre of road to the wellsite, up a steep grade along what is now a cattle trail, she says. “The (environmental) footprint that’s left is just phenomenal when you look at the proposed site.”
Maher, however, argues that the company’s environmental assessment found the project would have only minimal impact on the terrain.
If the initial exploratory well is successful, Polaris plans to drill up to three more sour gas wells and construct pipelines linking them all together. But all the wells would be drilled from the one wellsite location outside the park, and all the pipelines would also be outside the park, Maher said. “So it’s a minimal environmental impact.”
The company hopes to get Alberta Energy and Utilities Board approval to start drilling the first well sometime this year.
Dave Poulton, an executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, vows that environmentalists across the province will join the Maycroft ranchers in opposing the project.
“I think there’ll be huge opposition from many quarters,” Poulton says. “There’s just no reason for any energy development in that area.”
