Moratoria

Science does not support lifting fracking moratorium

Date: October 6, 2024
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Fracking & Health, Fracking and Economics, LNG, Moratoria, NBASGA

Protections put in place should be relaxed only if further findings emerge providing evidence no harm will result

By Jim Emberger – Special to Brunswick News – Published Oct 5, 2024

A recent Narrative Research poll, commissioned by Brunswick News, on lifting the fracking moratorium noted that the second largest group of poll respondents (19 per cent) replied “I don’t know” to the questions.

That likely illustrates that the success of the moratorium. For ten years it has, ironically, removed the shale gas issue from civic and media discussion.

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It’s time: make the fracking moratorium permanent

Date: September 30, 2024
Author: NBASGA
Categories: climate change, Fracking & Health, Fracking and Economics, LNG, Moratoria, Research & Scientific Studies

Commentary by Jim Emberger
Originally published on NB Media Co-op
September 30, 2024

This election marks the tenth anniversary of the 2014 election, when voters turfed the Progressive Conservative government of the day, primarily over the issue of fracking for shale gas. This followed years of New Brunswick’s largest protests, petitions with tens of thousands of signatures, province-wide educational tours, expert witness testimony, peaceful blockades, a citizen lawsuit, and, unfortunately, a violent police raid on peaceful Indigenous protesters.

The new government assembled a non-partisan citizen commission, which took public testimony, and reached conclusions leading the government to declare an indefinite moratorium on fracking.

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First Nations, Health and Labour groups weigh in with support for the moratorium

Date: June 17, 2019
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Fracking News, Moratoria

Within a week of Premier Blaine Higgs’ “Big Reveal” to the press that they have put necessary exemptions in place to lift the moratorium on fracking in Penobsquis, First Nations Chiefs, feeling blindsided by the move, are clear that any change in the status of the moratorium does not have their consent. As well, the New Brunswick Lung Association and the New Brunswick Federation of Labour have issued clear statements of their support for maintaining the moratorium.

We thank them all for their leadership and support. Read their reasons below:

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Maintain the NB Moratorium

Date: September 15, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Fracking News, Moratoria, NBASGA, Press Releases

PC Platform Plank on Resource Development is Without Substance

For Immediate Release
Sept. 13, 2018

[Le français suit]

(Fredericton) With less than two weeks left until the election, the Progressive Conservatives’ finally released their party platform. It contains a single sentence supporting ‘regional resource development.’  The words ‘shale’, ‘fracking’ and ‘moratorium’ do not appear in the document.

It is clearly designed to mask the PC’s plan to lift the moratorium on fracking without arousing citizens who fought a bitter battle to stop fracking during the last election.

Jim Emberger, Spokesperson for the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA), warns that, “The platform statement is a catch phrase without benefit of details, designed to mute discussion of a contentious and deadly serious issue during the election,” adding that, “the language is so vague because the PC’s are aware of the continued widespread opposition to shale gas development.  They don’t want the issue examined too closely.”

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Before you Vote

Date: September 15, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Moratoria, NBASGA, Social License

The New Brunswick Election is September 24 (Early polls September 15, 17) and hydraulic fracturing is once more an issue of interest to New Brunswickers.

Before you vote, consider this: There are many issues to be considered when choosing how to vote. Sometimes we have to choose between two parties, each of which has some positions you support, and some you don’t.

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Tories are incoherent on ‘regional social license’

Date: September 13, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: climate change, Moratoria, Most Asked Questions, Social License

Commentary by Jim Emberger, Telegraph Journal, 13 Sept 2018

The freshly released Progressive Conservatives platform contains only a single sentence on shale gas, and leaves “regional social license” – mooted by leader Blaine Higgs in April – entirely unexplained.

Even without adequate detail in the platform, the very concept is a clear case of putting the cart before the horse.

The shale gas moratorium’s first condition sensibly dictates that, before social license can be granted, citizens must receive “clear and credible information about the impacts of hydraulic fracturing on public health, the environment and water.”

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Keep fracking ban to slow climate change

Date: July 24, 2018
Author: NBASGA
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.

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Shale Gas as a Campaign Issue: There is just no reason to reexamine it

Date: April 26, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Fracking & Health, Fracking News, Moratoria, NBASGA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Fredericton, NB (April 26, 2018) – It was with great surprise and disappointment that the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance learned that the Progressive Conservative Party has decided to make shale gas an issue in the 2018 election.

“There is absolutely no basis on which to reconsider the current moratorium,” says spokesman Jim Emberger. “There is not a single one of the five conditions for lifting the moratorium that can be met.”  He also noted that a partial lifting is illogical saying, ”the problems associated with shale gas do not stay local. The air and water pollution, health problems, earthquakes and climate change effects of shale gas travel far from the well, and further than originally thought.”

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Latest News & Studies on Fracking

Date: April 12, 2017
Author: NBASGA
Categories: climate change, Fracking News, Moratoria, Research & Scientific Studies, Water Issues

Fracking and Water Contamination

Many of you may remember Dr. John Cherry, the internationally recognized expert on groundwater contamination, whom NBASGA brought to New Brunswick to testify at the Commission on Hydrofracturing. His testimony was very influential, as he pointed out that no place in the world was actually monitoring what happened to methane (and other substances) that leaked from shale gas wells. Thus, regulations were meaningless, as no one knew where methane was going or what effects it was causing.

Now, Dr. Cherry and colleagues have released the first study to track methane’s voyage through an aquifer, and they conclude that:

“methane gas leaking from energy industry wells can travel great distances in groundwater and pose safety risks, contaminate water and contribute to climate change.”

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