CFB Suffield turns environmental battleground
Posted Jun 25, 2012 7:14 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Canadian military is finding itself on the front line of environmental defence.
National Defence has been engaged in a quiet tug-of-war with Cenovus over access to Canadian Forces Base Suffield, about 230 kilometres southeast of Calgary.
A provincial regulator granted the company licenses to drill 47 natural gas wells on the base last year.
The military has imposed a cap of 16 so-called “surface disturbances” per section of the base, which the industry has called arbitrary.
A spokesman for Cenovus, Brett Harris, says the rock-bottom price of natural gas has meant that the company is in no hurry to develop the wells, and it’s working with the defence department to iron out differences over the cap.
