The company that’s being condemned world-wide for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster has been given permission by the B.C. government to drill for coalbed methane in the Elk Valley, says the environmental group Wildsight

Permission was granted to British Petroleum (BP) by the B.C. Oil and Gas commission three days after the Deepwater Horizon explosion that caused the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history.

The proposed drill site is at Fir Creek, a tributary of the Elk River, 14 kilometres southeast of Sparwood. The site is on Teck Coal company land at the company’s Mist Mountain project.

Wildsight says BP has yet to inform Elk Valley residents of exactly when it intends to begin drilling. However, BP spokesman Hejdi Feick says the company doesn’t have a firm drilling date yet, but will be announcing one soon. “Our hope is that it will be roughly in three to four weeks.”

When drilling does begin, it will be according to rules laid down by the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission and meet all of the province’s environmental regulations, Feick says.

“Everything we do in this industry is highly regulated. In this case, we’re regulated by the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission. So before we can even proceed with drilling like this we have to make sure we meet certain requirements and such so when the well authorization permit was granted it was because we had met these requirements and regulations.”

Test-well drilling is the next step in BP’s Mist Mountain project, which the City of Fernie came out against on April 14, 2008, and which the Union of British Columbia Municipalities, the B.C. First Nations Summit and six major Canadian environmental organizations have spoken against. ?

?“Citizens of the Elk Valley have been quite clear that coalbed methane is ‘not ready for prime time’ in the southern Rockies,” said Ryland Nelson, Wildsight’s Southern Rockies program co-ordinator. “Coalbed methane is brutal on the landscape, public engagement has ground to a halt—and yet, here come the drills.”??

The BP office in Fernie shut down on April 1, 2010 and no public announcement of any drilling plans has been forthcoming. Supposedly, the information is ‘publicly available’ from the Oil and Gas Commission Nelson said.

“If you request it from the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission. But that’s not transparent. It just isn’t right to place the burden of due diligence on the public’s shoulders when it comes to staying on top of BP’s activities. ??“

Nelson says the drilling will go ahead despite BP’s role in the ongoing Gulf of Mexico disaster. Drilling now is too early for any corporation to tap into the promise of coalbed methane in the southern Rockies, least of all BP with its dismal safety record, Nelson said.

BP has the worst record of all the world’s oil and gas producers even before the Deepwater catastrophe according to the U.S. Center for Public Integrity, he said. ?

But comparing drilling thousands of meters deep in the ocean to coalbed methane drilling on dry land is not exactly fair, said Feick.

“I can appreciate people have concerns, but we have been doing this the right way from the beginning for three years. We’ve done all the environmental studies and we’ve committed to making them available to whoever wants to see them. We have been upfront, forthcoming and open about our plans with the communities there and if people have any concerns about the environmental studies we’ve done to date, we’d certainly encourage them to contact us.”

But Nelson says coalbed methane, a type of gas trapped underground in coal seams is difficult to extract and has caused serious environmental impacts in other locations. So far, more than 20 test wells have been drilled north of Elkford and water shown to be toxic to fish continues to be disposed of into an Elk River tributary, he says.

Nelson says development of the Mist Mountain project should not proceed without a mandatory environmental assessment and without the government granting sufficient funds for independent baseline research.

“Wildsight, private citizens and other organizations will be keeping an eye on what happens at Fir Creek.??“We aren’t going away. We are vigilant, even if our government isn’t,” Nelson says.