New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance / anti-gaz de schiste du N.-B
Representing New Brunswickers concerned about our future / Représentant les Néo-Brunswickois(es) préoccupés par notre avenir
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Fracking and Economics
Market Forces, Not Regulatory Uncertainty, Plague Shale Investment
Author: NBASGA
Categories: climate change, Fracking and Economics, Fracking News
by Jim Emberger, Telegraph Journal (edited version), 13 Sept 2019
Corridor Resources claims that provincial 'regulatory uncertainty' prevents it from finding shale gas investors. Brunswick News' editors endorsed this argument, dismissing the idea that simple market forces could explain the lack of investors.
Yet, the Higgs government, and its supporters, have now promoted multiple shale gas and bitumen projects, all of which have failed because they misread market forces. This isn't an enviable record for those who portray themselves as business-savvy. Perhaps, they are blinded to actual market signals by ideology, or absolute faith in an old maxim that fossil fuels are always a good investment.
Don't play games with equalization
Categories: climate change, Fracking and Economics
written by Rod Hill, Telegraph-Journal Wed Mar 27 2019
Premier Blaine Higgs's government is four months old and already there is, in my opinion, good news: the idea of an Energy East pipeline is surely dead. Yet since plans for the pipeline were abandoned by TransCanada in 2017, Energy East has lived a zombie-like existence, failing to die in the minds of many people.
They refuse to recognize the reality that, given long-term projections of oil sands production, such a pipeline was redundant after the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline by President Trump and other pipeline expansions. Yet despite this, Premier Higgs remained steadfast, demanding that Quebec accept Energy East if it wanted to use New Brunswick as a corridor for its hydroelectricity exports to New England.
Fracking In 2018: Another Year Of Pretending To Make Money
by Jim Emberger (from Huddle Today)
January is a popular time for reviewing the previous year to see where we are now. Since I write about the shale gas industry and global warming, let me share some annual reports from both, along with some commentary.
Fracking in 2018: Another Year of Pretending to Make Money: This has my vote for best title. The author notes that the 60 largest U.S. fracking companies have been accumulating losses at about $80 million per year for a decade. Investors and lenders lost $70 billion in loans due to 330 North American bankruptcies following the price crash of 2014, and last year The Wall Street Journal calculated industry debt around $180 billion.
Realism should guide energy development
Categories: Fracking and Economics, Fracking News
ROD HILL COMMENTARY, Telegraph Journal, 18 September 2018
According to a story, still popular in some quarters, exploiting shale gas reserves in New Brunswick will provide jobs and lots of money for the public purse. The popularity of a story with such a seemingly happy ending is easy to understand. But is the story true, or is it wishful thinking?
In a recent article,"It's time to make NB a 'have' province" (Sept. 14), Colleen Mitchell of the Atlantica Centre for Energy claims it's true. She writes that while Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia have received billions in royalty revenues from offshore oil and gas, this "is critical revenue that New Brunswick has been shut out of," apparently preferring "handouts" to exploiting our mining, oil and gas resources.
The recently released Progressive Conservative party platform seems to agree with this view, stating: "Subject to rigorous safety and environmental protections, and with local support, we will allow for regional resource development, including natural gas development."
Keep fracking ban to slow climate change
Categories: climate change, Fracking and Economics, Moratoria
Commentary by Jim Emberger, Telegraph Journal, 24 July 2018
It was gratifying to see a recent article acknowledging that climate change has already changed our weather, and that weather-related problems will become ever more frequent and severe ("Not .. our grandparents' weather, July 14, A2).
In the piece, a senior climatologist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, David Phillips, laid out in no-nonsense terms that New Brunswickers will be challenged to adapt to our increasingly confused climate.
Warnings and good advice about adapting are a necessary discussion, but the real conversation we need to be having on climate change is about 'preventing' the growing threats from a changed climate.
Progressive Conservative leader wrong on fracking
Categories: Fracking & Health, Fracking and Economics, Fracking News
Commentary by Jim Emberger, Telegraph Journal, 4 May 2018
The New Brunswick Progressive Conservatives' plan to lift the moratorium on shale gas paints a disappointing portrait of a party unable to exercise even minimum due diligence on this issue.
The NB Anti-Shale Gas Alliance filed a lawsuit challenging the province's embrace of shale gas in 2014, and unlike the PC's, we have tracked every scientific study since then, from a handful to over 1,300 today. All can be found in the, "Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking."
The evidence presented to the Commission on Hydrofracking from even the modest number of studies available in 2014 was strong enough to lead to our moratorium. Accumulating evidence presented to commissions in Nova Scotia, PEI, Newfoundland, New York, Maryland, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, and others, likewise led to moratoriums or bans.
Fracking, we hardly knew ye
Categories: Fracking and Economics
by Alec Bruce
It was fun while it lasted, but the people have spoken. So have New Brunswick's all-but-departed, hydraulic-fracturing development and production companies. Now, we can declare it: Dear fracking, rest in peace.
You were the bad boy of the oil and gas industry in these parts.
The other side of risk and science in shale gas
Categories: Fracking & Health, Fracking and Economics, Fracking News, Research & Scientific Studies, Social License
Jim Emberger Commentary, Telegraph Journal, 27 March 2016
Krista Ross' [Fredericton Chamber of Commerce] recent commentary (12 March 2016) suggested that New Brunswick's citizens are too unsophisticated to understand the science behind the risks surrounding shale gas, making them easy targets for shale gas opponents to manipulate with fear.
These condescending assertions are, fortunately, easy to dismiss. Our Alliance continues to direct the public to the hundreds of independent scientific studies that are now collected into a Compendium available at: http://concernedhealthny.org/compendium/.
NBASGA Statement on the New Brunswick Commission on Hydraulic Fracturing Report
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change, Fracking & Health, Fracking and Economics, Fracking News, Moratoria, Social License
The New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance provides the following statement about the report issued last Friday by the New Brunswick Commission on Hydrofracturing.
The Commissioners recognized that the discussion about shale gas had to be looked at in the contexts of the immediate need to combat climate change, the lack of a coherent and forward-looking energy policy for the province, and the inadequacy of current institutions and procedures in New Brunswick to deal with either shale gas or with the new realities of a low-carbon world.
The Case Against Shale Gas
Categories: climate change, Fracking & Health, Fracking and Economics, Moratoria, Most Asked Questions, NBASGA, Research & Scientific Studies
The following letter was sent to New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant and members of the Liberal Caucus on 22 February 2016.
Dear Premier Gallant:
The Commission on Hydrofracking will soon submit its report and the government will make its decision on the future of shale gas in the province. We have to ask: "After 5 years of examining the pros and cons, what evidence has accumulated to support each side?"
To answer this question we have put together a short summary of the latest news and scientific information on a few of the major issues at the heart of the discussion. We hope you will take the ten minutes necessary to read the attached document.
The executive summary follows.
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