Shale Gas Truck Seized By Elsipogtog First Nation Warriors

A shale gas explo­ration company’s ser­vice vehi­cle was sur­round­ed and seized by a group of self-described native war­riors near Elsi­pog­tog First Nation in so called “New Brunswick” on Tues­day, Roy­al Cana­di­an Mount­ed Police say.

A shale gas explo­ration company’s ser­vice vehi­cle was sur­round­ed and seized by a group of self-described native war­riors near Elsi­pog­tog First Nation in so called “New Brunswick” on Tues­day, Roy­al Cana­di­an Mount­ed Police say.

The truck dri­ver was con­front­ed at a gas bar along Route 116 dur­ing the lunch hour, police said, refer­ring to it as a peace­ful inci­dent.

RCMP would not con­firm who owns the truck, but it has a Stan­tec logo on its doors. Stan­tec is a Fred­er­ic­ton-based engi­neer­ing firm doing work for SWN Resources Cana­da, a major indus­try play­er in the province.

RCMP described the inci­dent as peace­ful.

Elsi­pog­tog Chief Aaron Sock had said ear­li­er in the day his coun­cil does not wel­come SWN’s seis­mic test­ing in New Brunswick.

SWN spokes­woman Tracey Stephen­son described the inci­dent as a “secu­ri­ty event” involv­ing one of the company’s sub­con­trac­tors.

The protest in Elsi­pog­tog con­tin­ued into the evening Tues­day at the local RCMP detach­ment, where the truck con­tain­ing seis­mic test­ing equip­ment was tak­en after pro­test­ers had seized it at a gas sta­tion along Route 116 dur­ing the lunch hour.

About 65 peo­ple, includ­ing chil­dren, gath­ered around the truck in a bid to keep it from being moved from the RCMP park­ing lot.

 

“I think [SWN] should pack up their gear and go,” said John Levi, who led the protest.

“This is not going to end until they do that,” he said. “That’s our goal.”

Levi said he is not affil­i­at­ed with the band chief and coun­cil, but was appoint­ed a few days ago as a war­rior chief for his tra­di­tion­al native ter­ri­to­ry.

He said he rep­re­sents about 5,000 peo­ple in Elsi­pog­tog and the sur­round­ing area, includ­ing non-native groups who oppose the devel­op­ment of a shale gas indus­try.

“They broke the law a long time ago when they start­ed this frack­ing in our tra­di­tion­al hunt­ing grounds, med­i­cine grounds, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing our waters,” Levi said.

Hydraulic frac­tur­ing, also known as hydro-frack­ing, is a process where explo­ration com­pa­nies inject a mix­ture of water, sand and chem­i­cals into the ground, cre­at­ing cracks in shale rock for­ma­tions.

That process allows com­pa­nies to extract nat­ur­al gas from areas that would oth­er­wise go untapped.

Oppo­nents of the process say it could have a neg­a­tive effect on local water sup­plies and many of them have held protests across the province.

Fracking secrecy questioned

The Oppo­si­tion Lib­er­als argued Tues­day there will be too much secre­cy sur­round­ing shale gas devel­op­ment in the province.

They not­ed sec­tions of the Oil and Gas Act will remain off-lim­its from the Right to Infor­ma­tion law.

But the ener­gy min­is­ter con­tends the exempt sec­tions apply to the geo­phys­i­cal data com­pa­nies will col­lect and it’s unrea­son­able to expect it would be made pub­lic.

“That infor­ma­tion, the com­pa­nies that are putting the invest­ment into that research, they should have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to uti­lize that infor­ma­tion to their advan­tage, for a rea­son­able amount of time, and that’s what the Oil and Gas Act says,” Leonard said.

The Lib­er­als argue they want to make sure the pub­lic knows what chem­i­cals are used by shale gas com­pa­nies. The gov­ern­ment says the list of chem­i­cals will be released pub­licly.