Public
Information Meeting: Sour Gas and Your Community
Date: Tuesday, August 26th
Time: 7:30 pm
Place: Cowley Hall, Cowley
Subject: Impacts of sour gas (H2S) development on
people, cattle, water and land values.
Forum: Panel Presentations followed by Q&A
Expert Panelists:
Don Bester: cow-calf operator and chairman of the Butte Action
Committee: Impact on water.
Gordon Cartwright, Mac Blades and/or Ken Stiles : Pekisko
Landowners Association: Impact on land and the fescue economy.
Janet Main : Main Ranch: Impact on ranching life.
Dr. Chris Jenson : DVM: Impact of flaring on cattle health.
Dr. David Swann : public health specialist: Impact on down
winders from acute and chronic exposures.
Sponsored by Local Landowners in the Porcupine Hills and Willow Valley.
For more information contact: John /Jillian Lawson : 403-628-2271
or Sid Marty :403-628-2331
Sour
Gas Backgrounder
1.) Sour gas is “dirty gas” that contains hydrogen sulfide,
a cyanide-like poison that kills in small amounts. Alberta is the
world’s leading producer of dirty gas: about 30% of its natural
gas is sour.
2.) Since the 1960s sour gas has killed more than 35 oil and gas workers
in Alberta and British Columbia; injured thousands of cattle and displaced
approximately one hundred landowners. (National Post Business Magazine,
2002)
3.) Due to their lethal contents sour gas wells and pipelines freeze
development on neighboring property by 100 metres or more. Farmers
and ranchers with sour gas wells on their land have documented a 50%
decrease in land values. The government offers no compensation for
this expropriation.
4.) Sour gas flares have been associated with still births in down
wind cattle (Waldner, 1999). Cattle exposed to sulfur dioxide, a byproduct
of flared H2S, develop respiratory problems, tissue inflammation and
immune problems. (Western Producer, June 17, 2002)
5.) A 2002 technical review of H2S by Alberta Health and Wellness
found that H2S is a “broad-spectrum toxicant that can elicit
numerous psychological and biological responses in the 0 to 20 ppm
range.” Human data on short-term effects is “limited”
and “for many organ systems, reliable information on effects
following short-term exposure to H2S is almost completely lacking.”
6.) The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers notes that “an
increasing number of residents in areas adjacent to sour oil and gas
producing or processing operations are actively opposing sour gas
developments.” In Adrossan more 1500 citizens successfully stopped
a proposal for six sour gas wells last spring.
In eastern Calgary scores of citizens are challenging a similar proposal
in an area inhabited by 250,000 people. And in Maycroft more than
100 ranchers are fighting a 30 % sour well proposed by Polaris Resources
Ltd, a company with no assets in Alberta and no employees. El Paso
is also proposing a sour gas well on a sacred Blackfoot burial ground
in Brocket. It, too, is being contested.