On Tuesday February 9, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency – CEAA has released a short 8 page analyses: Upstream Green House Gas Emissions Estimate for the Woodfibre LNG project (PDF) and has invited the public to comment on the analyses.
What is an upstream Green House Gas Emissions Estimate?
For any product, being it oil, gas or your favourite toy, you can make an overview of what was needed to produce the product and what amount of Green House Gas was released into the atmosphere all along the way from;
- extracting and refining the base materials,
- making and transporting the product,
- to using and discarding the product.
When tools have to be made to extract or make the material and product, the amount of Green house gases released during making the tools becomes part of the overview as well.
In the case of Woodfibre LNG ‘Upstream’ means, all releases of Green House Gases from the point of extraction to where it arrives at Woodfibre LNG.
What are the important Green House Gas emissions for this project?
Simply put, they are CO2 and methane.
CO2 is released during burning of fossil fuels for making of tools, drilling and transportation. Methane: the actual gas that is extracted and which is supposed to be liquefied at Woodfibre LNG’s proposed facility. Methane is way more potent as a green house gas than CO2. 80 times of a
Review of the analyses
We have reviewed the Upstream Green House Gas Emissions Estimate for the Woodfibre LNG project and this is what we found:
- The analyses deals with CO2 emissions only and totally ignores the fugitive releases of methane from fracking well heads, during extraction and transportation.
- The CO2 analyses excludes many part of the methane extraction process. The reasons given is limited amount of time to gt the data needed.
- Woodfibre LNG has been using a strategy to be unclear from which sources it would buy the methane it wants to liquefy and export.
What to send the CEAA
- Let the CEAA know this a really poor analyse for the above reasons.
- Demand that the CEAA uses a rule of thump for amounts of Green House Gas released at extraction and during transportation so clarity would be provided about how much green house gas is released upstream for a project like Woodfibre LNG, so it is of no use trying to hide your sources.
- Demand the public comment process to be put on halt, until a better analyses becomes available.
Comments can be submitted to the CEAA until March 1 2016:
Woodfibre LNG Project
Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency
410-701 West Georgia Street
Vancouver, British Columbia V7Y 1C6
Telephone: 604-666-2431
Fax: 604-666-6990
Email: Woodfibre@ceaa-acee.gc.ca
