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Colorado Tour Highlights the Perils of Coal-bed Methane

Local resident Gopa Ross (left) and James Andre of Ft. McPherson, Northwest Territories (right)

James Andre of the Ft. McPherson Renewable Resources Council in the NWT and Juri Peepre of CPAWS-Yukon recently returned from a fact-finding tour of two coal-bed methane (CBM) development zones in southern Colorado. With help from the Oil and Gas Accountability Project (OGAP) based in Durango, Andre and Peepre visited the scenic Raton and San Juan basins, where several thousand coal-bed methane wells have been drilled in the past decade.

Funded by the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, the tour was part of a CPAWS-Yukon public education project on the potential environmental and social impacts of CBM in northwestern Canada. For example, CBM extraction has been proposed for the Peel watershed and the Three Rivers area, in the absence of regulations or even guidelines to govern the industry in the Yukon. Land use planning is underway in the Peel region, and this tour was conceived to provide more information to northern communities on the CBM industry.

New CBM well pad and water pit within 50 ft of a dwelling in the Raton Basin, Colorado

Coal-bed methane is a natural gas trapped in coal seams. The gas is released by first pumping out groundwater that is then discharged or collected on the surface. CBM production results in a much more intensive ecological footprint than conventional natural gas extraction, although both industries lead to widespread road building, habitat loss and fragmentation, and potential negative effects on both human health and wildlife populations.

In the rolling hill country west of Trinidad, two local landowners showed the result of 10 years of CBM development – a dense network of mostly gated industrial roads servicing hundreds upon hundreds of well sites spaced out at 400 to 500 metre intervals across the land. Looking around from any given well site here – each typically consisting of a 30 to 75 metre wide clearing with a well-head, pump, water disposal pit and a humming gas powered motor – three or four more well pads and roads are visible from each. This quiet and scenic ranching valley has been transformed into an industrial development zone, complete with constant truck traffic, ongoing construction activity, dust, noise from pumps and compressors, pipelines, roads, soil erosion, and as yet poorly understood impacts on groundwater. Some people’s water wells have been contaminated by the CBM development. Others have tried to sell out in face of the constant stress of dealing with ever-increasing industrial activity on their land. In one instance a well had been drilled 20 metres from a residence, 80 metres closer than regulations permit, with little recourse for the owners.

In the US, as in Canada, landowners own the surface rights to the land, while mining or oil and gas companies can obtain rights to sub-surface minerals or hydrocarbons. Landowners generally cannot stop resource extraction on their land; they must accommodate the industry through a negotiated arrangement. In Colorado, many landowners receive a small sum of money for the disturbance – about $2,500. There is rarely, if ever, any provision for the cumulative impacts of such development on private or public land.

Sign from an area producing conventional natural gas, along the Alcan Highway in NE British Columbia

In the San Juan basin near Durango, one ranching family homesteaded a beautiful Ponderosa pine valley 36 years ago, only to have the CBM industry arrive in the 1980s. Two wells were drilled on their property of more than 6,000 that were drilled in the region in the past twenty years. Noise from the pump jacks and generators, soil erosion resulting from poorly built roads, explosive releases of methane gas, and the constant strain of dealing with an ever-present industrial expansion have permanently altered the peaceful life of this family.

Nearby, a methane seep caused by the expanding CBM extraction caused an evacuation of an entire neighbourhood adjacent to the Pine River. Rather than admit liability, the company quietly purchased the properties and demolished the homes.

Coal-bed methane extraction is not “just a plumbing job” as suggested by one industry spokesman. In the vast pristine watersheds of the Yukon, both natural gas and coal-bed methane development could have a permanent and ecologically devastating impact on wildlife habitat and populations, water and air quality. The recent CPAWS-Yukon visit to two CBM producing areas in Colorado demonstrated just how severe the impacts on people and the environment can be.

Should coal-bed methane extraction be an allowable land use in the beautiful Peel watershed and Three Rivers? Is it necessary to follow the same path to landscape ruin as in parts of Colorado or Wyoming, or shall an economic future for the Peel be built on conservation and community-based enterprises?

For more information on the CBM experience in the US, visit the OGAP website at www.ogap.org.

All photos by Juri Peepre