Bruce Bisset: So much for fracking snow job

Seems to me if Hawke's Bay Regional Council thinks going through the motions with a few nice words is enough to cover up the snow job it is apparently doing over fracking, then it has seriously underestimated the opposition.

Unanimously backing councillor Liz Remmerswaal's call last week to ask the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to undertake a study of the dubious oil industry practice of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is, on the face of it, a cautious move by a responsible body.

But it means diddly squat. As CEO Andrew Newman was at pains to point out in the press release trumpeting that resolution, the council is obliged to accept and process any application to frack that comes before it.

And, as Newman noted in the same PR, it already "has a range of controls relevant to this type of activity that provides for sustainable management of natural resources".

In other words, when TAG Oil submits its consent applications - expected within the next month or so - the council can go through the motions of due process while publicly wringing its hands that the commissioner hasn't had time to provide a position paper for it to consider, even though such report could have an impact on any decision.

This is the "look good while disclaiming responsibility" political two-step; a canny ploy utilised by anybody happy to bend over for vested interests - in this case, big oil backed by National Government licence.

Now, you might think maybe the HBRC is just a provincial council with its heart in the right place but acting a tad naively, so this criticism is rather harsh.

You might but then you wouldn't have read the preliminary "fact-finding" report authored by HBRC officer Bryce Lawrence, just back from his industry-paid-for Canadian junket where he supposedly investigated the ins-and-outs of oil and gas company performance in British Columbia.

I say supposedly because the report contains almost no hard factual information one way or the other; it merely summarises Lawrence's opinions which, in a nutshell, are that there's no evidence of any extra significant dangers from fracking and anyone who says otherwise is misinformed.

Or, as he actually put it, he could, on the say-so of the BC regulators, "confirm that hydraulic fracturing opponents do not represent the facts of the issues presented to provide a balanced view".

Note that word, "confirm". Interesting preconception there.

Note also that British Columbia's Oil & Gas Commission is rabidly pro-industry and is known to issue mining and pipeline and water-take consents with no public input whatsoever. Partisan? Just a tad.

Lawrence ostensibly also talked to First Nation (Canadian Indian) and environmental groups as well as affected landowners while in BC, but there is nothing about that in his report - let alone whether they took a different view.

Why Lawrence - who is a compliance manager also in charge of harbours - was picked to do an environmental investigative job instead of any of several staffers seemingly more appropriately qualified is a good question.

Perhaps - as I am reliably informed - it's because senior council members evidently like to use him as their hired gun.

So much for transparent process, eh?

Mind you, with the brief structured as it was (in full below), I guess you couldn't expect anything more robust.

To whit: "If the well completion is substandard, groundwater is at risk of contamination by gas, oil and deep saline groundwater, regardless of whether hydraulic fracturing occurs, as well as at risk from hydraulic fracturing. Therefore if the well completion is done to best practice standard, and the well is proven to have good integrity, the risk to groundwater is minimal in the geological context of the proposed Hawke's Bay exploration zone."

Lawrence's job was simply to prove or disprove that; he claims to have proved it. Good for him.

Consequently his view, expressed in the report which goes before the council's environmental committee on Thursday, is that if a well and its operation meets best practice, it's irrelevant whether it's fracked or not.

Ah, hello! Then why did the council think it prudent to ask the commissioner to do a study into fracking?

Guess she can ignore that call - Lawrence has already done it.

That's the right of it.Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.