Gas industry fires back at NDP leader’s concerns about fracking
Posted Jun 11, 2012 3:37 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The oil and gas business is firing back in the wake of the latest salvo targetting the industry from federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair.
After criticizing the oilsands and the perceived effect the industry has on the Canadian dollar and manufacturing jobs in Eastern Canada, Mulcair is now accusing the gas industry of “pulling a con job” when it comes to promoting the practice of shale gas fracking.
A spokesman for the Canadian Society of Unconventional Resources says the leader of the Official Opposition in Ottawa needs to check his facts, but at the same time admits that the industry needs to do a better job of educating the public about the issue.
“The industry is a little bit guilty,” Kevin Heffernan tells 660News, noting the practice has been around for a long time but the public knows very little about the subject. “We haven’t done an especially good job over that six decades of explaining and talking about hydraulic fracturing operations and what we do. I expect it to change, and I think you’re right: we’re late to the game in terms explaining what we do, how we operate.”
Hydraulic fracturing involves the use of high volumes of water and chemicals which are injected into layers of rock to release pockets of shale gas.
Heffernan feels critics of the industry, including Mulcair, don’t have all the facts.
“I’d be happy to sit down with him and go through the process and talk to him about it,” he adds, “and give him the opportunity to better understand how it works.”
Mulcair’s initial shot at the industry targetted the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers as he called on the organization to tell the public what’s in the fluid used in fracking. Concerns about the practice include the ramifications to the public water supply. Earlier this year CAPP rolled out a fracking best practices policy, but because of competitive reasons the the ingredients of various solutions used in solutions were kept secret.
Heffernan says CAPP is a producer’s lobby group, not an industry regulator, adding he hopes Mulcair knows the difference.
