Canadian Flathead left out of natural-gas deal

By SUSAN GALLAGHER / The Associated Press

HELENA - BP Canada on Friday received natural-gas rights for a potential energy project in a segment of British Columbia watched closely by environmental activists in both the province and in Montana.

British Columbia granted the rights to BP for its proposed Mist Mountain coal-bed methane project in the province's southeast, after the Flathead River Basin was removed from the project area. In the debate about possible environmental effects from Mist Mountain coal-bed methane work, the border-spanning Flathead had been particularly prominent, with activists in Montana raising the specter of harm traveling downstream.

Even with the Flathead removed, the prospect of the coal-bed methane project in combination with other current and proposed industrial activity in southeastern British Columbia is alarming, said Will Hammerquist of the National Parks Conservation Association in Whitefish near Glacier National Park, which extends to the British Columbia border.

A number of regulatory clearances would be necessary for BP to extract coal-bed methane, a type of natural gas in coal seams. Company spokeswoman Anita Perry in Calgary, Alberta, said there are no immediate plans to start a project. Environmental studies have been conducted and there will be more in 2009, Perry said.

She and Richard Neufeld, British Columbia's minister of energy, mines and petroleum resources, said Friday that they did not immediately have figures indicating the size of the land area beneath which gas rights were granted. Casey Brennan of the environmental group Wildsight in Fernie, British Columbia, estimated that BP's initial "area of interest" was 190 square miles. Withdrawing the Flathead may have cut the area to about 115 square miles, he said.

If BP eventually extracts coal-bed methane, the province will require water brought forth in that work be injected underground, not disposed of on the ground's surface, Neufeld told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. Water emerging in coal-bed methane work often is salty. Neufeld noted the disposal requirement as he talked about the province's intent to address environmental concerns.

Underground water disposal hardly soothes Mist Mountain's critics, because much is unknown about it, said Brennan.

Hammerquist said that Mist Mountain, mining in British Columbia's southeast and proposals for other natural resources extraction add up to serious questions about the long-term quality of the Glacier National Park headwaters in the province.

"I don't think they should be alarmed, any more than they should be alarmed when their own state awards tenure (the granting of gas rights) in Montana," Neufeld said. Natural resources projects in the province are regulated well and officials are aware of cumulative effects, he said.

"I don't get up and put my hat on in the morning and say, 'Hey, I'm going to see what I can go out and wreck,"' Neufeld said. "Neither does anyone else in British Columbia."

The Flathead Coalition, a transboundary alliance of community, tribal, business and conservation interests, reported Wednesday that it met with BP in Calgary a day earlier and requested it sideline Mist Mountain pending completion of an analysis examining the impact of existing and proposed projects. BP's policy is to not comment on conversations that take place in private meetings with the company, Perry said.