Article content

Of the many “unknowns” flagged in a recent science panel report, few are as disturbing as the finding that no one can say how destructive an earthquake may be when triggered during brute-force oil and gas industry fracking operations.

The panel’s report, commissioned by Michelle Mungall, B.C.’s minister of energy, mines and petroleum resources, has landed at an awkward time for the current government, which like the government before it, is all-in on liquefied natural gas.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Ben Parfitt: Memo to northeast B.C.: more fracking earthquakes ahead Back to video

If big LNG plants that the government is heavily invested in subsidizing ever materialize, the natural gas demand to supply them will be enormous. Tens of thousands of new gas wells will have to be drilled and fracked in northeast B.C., our province’s industrial sacrifice zone. More earthquakes will be generated and it will likely be impossible to predict their force.

In late November, a 4.5-magnitude earthquake shook residents’ homes from the community of Charlie Lake to Pouce Coupe, 100 kilometres away. It shook the ground so forcefully at the Site C dam construction site near Fort St. John, northeast B.C.’s largest city, that a conference call was hastily convened between B.C. Hydro officials and provincial Oil and Gas Commission staff.