Fracking News

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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Progressive Conservative leader wrong on fracking

Date: May 4, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Fracking & Health, Fracking and Economics, Fracking News

Commentary by Jim Emberger, Telegraph Journal, 4 May 2018

The New Brunswick Progressive Conservatives’ plan to lift the moratorium on shale gas paints a disappointing portrait of a party unable to exercise even minimum due diligence on this issue.

The NB Anti-Shale Gas Alliance filed a lawsuit challenging the province’s embrace of shale gas in 2014, and unlike the PC’s, we have tracked every scientific study since then, from a handful to over 1,300 today. All can be found in the, “Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking.”

The evidence presented to the Commission on Hydrofracking from even the modest number of studies available in 2014 was strong enough to lead to our moratorium. Accumulating evidence presented to commissions in Nova Scotia, PEI, Newfoundland, New York, Maryland, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, and others, likewise led to moratoriums or bans.

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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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Stop chasing a fossil fuel dinosaur

Date: February 8, 2017
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Fracking & Health, Fracking News, Research & Scientific Studies, Wastewater Disposal, Water Issues

Commentary by Jim Emberger (Fredericton Gleaner, 7 February 2017)

Donald Trump’s resurrection of the Keystone pipeline has some pundits worried that Energy East may be cancelled. This in turn has some editorialists calling for a return to shale gas as New Brunswick’s saviour.

Apparently they have forgotten that five conditions must be met before the shale gas moratorium can be lifted. New studies furnish examples why those conditions are unlikely to be met.

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New Brunswick Extends Fracking Moratorium Indefinitely

Date: May 29, 2016
Author: NBASGA
Categories: civil disobedience, Fracking News, Good News, Moratoria, NBASGA, Press Releases

On Friday, May 27, 2016, the Brian Gallant Liberal government announced that the moratorium on hydraulic fracturing would continue indefinitely. Below are links to NBASGA’s official Press Statement on the extended moratorium, and comments from spokesperson, Jim Emberger, as well as congratulatory notes from our supporters around the world.

This is a good day for the People, the Province, the Planet…and for our Democratic Process.

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NBASGA encourages UK activists

Date: May 27, 2016
Author: NBASGA
Categories: civil disobedience, Fracking News, NBASGA

by Tom Richmond, Yorkshire Post, 27 May 2016

INTERNATIONAL support is growing for Ryedale’s anti-fracking movement as Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom claims that the extraction of shale gas in North Yorkshire is “an opportunity we can’t afford to miss” if UK energy supplies are to be secured. A week after more than 850 elected civic leaders from New York State urged North Yorkshire County Council to reject Third Energy’s application for a test site at Kirby Misperton – a plea that fell on deaf ears on Monday night – opponents in the Canadian province of New Brunswick are the latest to lend their support.

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Recent news on fracking

Date: May 26, 2016
Author: NBASGA
Categories: climate change, Fracking & Health, Fracking News, Moratoria, Wastewater Disposal

In encouraging local news, The Environmental Advisory Committee, established by the Provincial Government of PEI to create a new Water Act, has recommended banning fracking in PEI.  This conforms to the trend of the last few years, as the case against shale gas and fracking grows with each new study, regardless of topic – water contamination, public health, earthquakes, climate change, etc.

Recently, news on fracking has taken a decided about-face from the many stories previously singing its praises. The truth is beginning to emerge.

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The other side of risk and science in shale gas

Date: March 28, 2016
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Fracking & Health, Fracking and Economics, Fracking News, Research & Scientific Studies, Social License

Jim Emberger Commentary, Telegraph Journal, 27 March 2016

Krista Ross’ [Fredericton Chamber of Commerce] recent commentary (12 March 2016) suggested that New Brunswick’s citizens are too unsophisticated to understand the science behind the risks surrounding shale gas, making them easy targets for shale gas opponents to manipulate with fear.

These condescending assertions are, fortunately, easy to dismiss. Our Alliance continues to direct the public to the hundreds of independent scientific studies that are now collected into a Compendium available at: http://concernedhealthny.org/compendium/.

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NBASGA Statement on the New Brunswick Commission on Hydraulic Fracturing Report

Date: March 1, 2016
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change, Fracking & Health, Fracking and Economics, Fracking News, Moratoria, Social License

The New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance provides the following statement about the report issued last Friday by the New Brunswick Commission on Hydrofracturing.

The Commissioners recognized that the discussion about shale gas had to be looked at in the contexts of the immediate need to combat climate change, the lack of a coherent and forward-looking energy policy for the province, and the inadequacy of current institutions and procedures in New Brunswick to deal with either shale gas or with the new realities of a low-carbon world.

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