Sour gas next door: B.C. couple asked the courts for protection but lost (2024)

A northern B.C. couple was unsuccessful in their bid to protect their family from noxious gases they feared would be released by natural gas drilling adjacent to their home. Observers say their effort to halt operations at the sour gas well, which failed in court, highlights potentially fatal problems in provincial rules regulating gas wells.

A B.C. Supreme Court judgetossed a request for an injunction fromEwald Heler and Claudia Pamela Heler last week. The couple had sought to temporarily pause drilling and fracking activities at a planned natural gas wellsite 80 metres from their home due to health concerns.

According to court documents, the couple purchased the land in 2022, when the concrete well pad was built but not yet in operation and did not see the infrastructure before the purchase. Well pads are graded areas designed to manage rainfall runoff and support heavy drilling equipment.

They cited concerns about air, noise and light pollution and asked for work to be paused unless the gas company could keep them at least two kilometres away from the gas pad whenever drilling or maintenance was in progress. If the work couldn't be stopped, they asked that the company put them up in a hotel for the weeks it was taking place, to protect them from toxic emissions.

The well will extract so-called "sour gas," which contains hydrogen sulfide, court documents note. Hydrogen sulfide is a widely known toxic gas; it was used as a chemical weapon during the First World War. In B.C. alone, it has been found to be responsible fordozens of deaths. The gas is estimated to be in between a quarter and a third of U.S. gas wells, with the country's Environmental Protection Agency warning the "potential for routine H2S emissions [at oil and gas wells] is significant."

In his ruling, the judge concluded that the couple, who represented themselves, did not have enough evidence of harm and had sued under the wrong legal framework.

Still, for Calvin Sandborn, an environmental lawyer, the couple's failed bid shines a new light on the longstanding risk posed by sour gas and whether B.C.'s rules are strong enough to protect people.

"The bigger issue is the safety of the public around these gas wells, and the fact that, you know, they are dangerous," he said.

Over a decade ago, he co-authored areport with the University of Victoria's Environmental Law Centre that assessed the proximity of elementary schools to gas wells in the province's northern Peace region, near Fort St. John. According to the study, nine schools were located close enough to gas wells they could be at risk in the event of a sour gas leak or other emergency, puttingroughly 1,900 students at risk.

The findings prompted outrage at the time, and the government eventuallypromised to impose a 1,000-metre buffer zone around schools where gas wells couldn't be built, he recalled. Homes and other buildings were not included in promises for larger buffers.

While the 1,000-metre rule is not written into the provincial law regulating oil and gas production, Lannea Parfitt, a spokesperson for the B.C. Energy Regulator, wrote in an email it is included in an internal guidance document the regulator uses to approve new gas wells.

When asked to provide a copy of the guidance document, she noted that "the 1,000 metre setback is an internal process and is not posted on the external [B.C. Energy Regulator] website. The documentation supporting that is currently being updated."

"A well has not been permitted within a 1,000 meters of a known school since 2016," she wrote. But with the exception of schools, the B.C. laws regulating the placement of gas wells only require a 100-metre buffer zone between a "permanent building" or "place of public concourse."

Sandborn's concerns about the health risks posed by natural gas extraction appeared to be echoed in the recent ruling. While the judge concluded the Helers’ case wasn't strong enough to warrant an injunction, he admitted the extraction of natural gas so close to their home was risky.

"If they remain on the property during the fracking and drilling operations," he wrote, "they are likely to suffer some degree of irreparable harm, in relation to their personal health and that of their children."