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MAY/JUNE 2012
PIPELINE NEWS NORTH •
special feature 10 Western dreams - the history of Westcoast Energy
Most of B.C. agrees on developing resources james waterman Pipeline News North The only surprise from the results of the British Columbia Oil and Gas Management Public Opinion Survey that were released this spring was that there were few differences in the responses from all regions of British Columbia. The purpose of the study, which was sponsored by the BC Oil and Gas Commission (OGC) and the Science and Community Environmental Knowledge Fund (SCEK), was to assess the opinions and beliefs held by all British Columbians regarding the oil and gas industry in the province and how it is regulated. Howie Harshaw, the researcher from the University of British Columbia (UBC) who led the study, suggested that the results actually cut through a lot of the North versus South name calling and stereotypes that exist in B.C. to get to the real heart of the matter. “I think we get kind of caught up sometimes in this dichotomy,” he said, “that we have the folks up North – people would call them rednecks, I suppose – who are mostly concerned with rural values and those sorts of ideas. They understand the resource connection a bit more closely. They actually work in the resource industries. “And we have the – what do they call them? – the cappuccino-suckers down on the Lower Mainland who are very environmentally-minded and… generally opposed to these sorts of developments. Those are sort of the stereotypes. “And that didn’t really bear out in this project,” he continued, adding that “there were really no differences, statistical or otherwise, between the four different regions that we looked at.” Harshaw noted that a concurrent survey concerning attitudes about using bio-fuels yielded similar results. “Asked the very same questions about environmental attitudes,” he said. “And they were pretty much exactly the same. So, I feel pretty confident about that result. In general, British Columbians’ environmental attitudes are pretty much the same across the province. “Certainly, their motivations may 28231
differ, but their overall attitudes are essentially the same.” That didn’t actually surprise the OGC. “The study is important because, as the regulator, we’re accountable to all British Columbians,” said OGC spokesperson Hardy Friedrich. “A detailed understanding of the topics investigated in the report are important to efficient and effective regulation of oil and gas activities. So, the results of the survey will help identify priorities and objectives that may be useful for our framework. And they can also inform how programs are implemented in order to increase opportunities for public engagement and more involvement in the regulatory process. “The results did not display really any unexpected responses,” he added. “We understand similar surveys done in other industries had similar responses as well.” The similarity between responses in the four regions of the province identified by the study is interesting considering the commonly held belief in the Northeast, where most of the oil and gas industry activity occurs, that the rest of the province, particularly the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, does not know or understand what is happening in their jurisdiction. “I think that was reflected in some of the handwritten comments we had on some of the surveys, particularly from folks up in the Northeast,” Harshaw said in discussing that notion. “And I would expect that’s true,” he continued, “just as people in the Northeast probably aren’t as aware of different resource contexts in other parts of the province. We kind of just are aware of our local context or regional context, generally. But I think people in the Lower Mainland and sort of the southeast part of the province – certainly on the coast – are aware of oil and gas development issues and do have some concerns.” Harshaw explained that those polled were presented with a group of seven resource values and asked to identify which of those values should be priorities in terms of resource management and industry regulation.
“And sustaining clean drinking water was by far the highest priority among all people in the province,” he said. “And the way that they ranked and then listed those different resource values was essentially the same, with the minor difference, I think, in the Northeast.” That minor difference was that respondents in the Northeast indicated that sustaining economic benefits was a slightly higher priority than it was for respondents in the rest of the province. “There certainly was the recognition that oil and gas developments can have environmental impacts, can have effects on habitat,” said Harshaw. However, he also remarked that respondents from all four regions indicated “human ingenuity and technology” could allow the industry to manage issues of sustainable development and limits to growth in the sector. “There is a sense that, yeah, we recognize there are these problems, but then there’s also a sense that, you know, I think we can probably address these problems with what we know,” he added. Harshaw said it was important to get the survey results out to the public as quickly as possible, but that there is still work to be done as well. “My next steps are to look at some of the relationships between the different questions to try to better understand what’s driving certain attitudes and responses,” he continued. “I think [the OGC sees] a lot of value in this work … to establish this baseline for public attitudes and to try to understand what’s required, perhaps, for a real social license to regulate oil and gas resources. “Perhaps, down the road, they might want to revisit these questions to see if public attitudes are changing.” “We’re responsible to all British Columbians in our oil and gas regulatory process,” said Friedrich. “And the study was initiated to understand that public perception. Areas such as the public participation and trust were identified, and those results help us inform how we can best involve the public in the process and show the public that we are a trusted, unbiased source for oil and gas information in B.C.”
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