The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) is seriously considering giving the green light to coal exploration north of Blairmore.
If this sounds like a broken record, that’s because it is.
A similar proposal has been denied twice already in the past. What’s worse, the application flies in the face of a recent provincial government directive.
On September 5, 2023, Northback Holdings Corporation filed an application with the Energy Regulator for an exploratory drilling permit on the Grassy Mountain coal deposit.
This Australian-owned company wants to drill 46 boreholes between 150 and 550 metres deep on a mix of Crown land and its private land.
In response to an inquiry from Canadian Press reporter Bob Weber, Teresa Broughton, an AER spokesperson, said the regulator can accept and process applications for an “advanced coal project.”
“Whether this project is an ‘advanced coal project’ is something that will be considered as part of the (regulator’s) full technical review of the application,” Broughton said.
But Broughton is colouring outside the lines, according to Nigel Bankes from the University of Calgary’s law school.
Bankes points out that the proposal is not an advanced coal project. It’s exploratory drilling for a new coal project.
In a scathing blog post, Bankes pointed out that Northback’s application fails to meet the “no new coal rule” in a 2022 Ministerial Order directed at the AER.
A Little History
This is not the first kick at this coal exploration can. It’s just the latest twist in a complicated tale. In 2015, the same Australian company, but then called Benga Mining, pitched the Grassy Mountain Coal Project.
In November of that year, Benga submitted an environmental impact assessment application to the AER and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEEA.) The following year, the company submitted an updated impact assessment application.
The application was considered by a Joint Review Panel (JRP) comprised of representatives from both the provincial regulator (AER) and the federal regulator (CEEA)
In June of 2021, the Joint Review Panel denied the application.
The panel found it wasn’t in the public interest.
The JRP noted that the proposed coal mine would likely negatively impact surface water quality and threaten endangered west slope cutthroat trout.
The JRP criticized the company’s application for underestimating the negative environmental impacts and overestimating its ability to mitigate those impacts and the positive economic benefits of the project.
But it wasn’t over yet.
If At First You Don’t Succeed…
In March 2022, then Minister of Energy Sonya Savage, issued Ministerial Order (MO/002/2022.)
In Bankes’ words, this ministerial order was an attempt to “walk back” the province’s previous order and “open up new areas of the eastern slopes of the Rockies to coal exploration and mining.”
However, the public backlash was fierce and strong. It forced Minister Savage to walk back her attempted walk back.
So why is the Alberta energy regulator wasting more public money and resources reviewing a coal drilling project that may not even meet its own criteria for review and has already been rejected?
Why Keep Trying?
Public statements by the provincial regulator suggest a pro-coal mining agenda is at play and is tainting the review process.
“… comments provided to the media by an AER spokesperson give rise to concerns that the AER has already prejudged the matter,” Bankes said in his blog post.
In other words, the province isn’t fooling anyone.
And the people who would have to live with this proposed coal project’s impacts are tired of fighting it.
In a YouTube video released on October 3, the Hurtin’ Albertan country singer Corb Lund dug his spurs into Danielle Smith’s government.
“… it was done, quietly, stealthily, and under the radar, again. Apparently, someone in government has given this company an expedited application process,” Lund said. “This project was denied last year by the feds and the provincial government for not being in the interest to the public, and the public itself here in the province has roundly rejected it, or the vast majority, in poll after poll after poll.”
Lund went on to point out that Alberta is in the midst of “a crippling drought, and we don’t have any extra water allocation to give coal mines upstream. It also is the drinking water for 150,000 people as well as the cornerstone of a billion-dollar agri-food business in Southern Alberta,” Lund said.
Katie Morrison, executive director of the southern Alberta chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), told CBC News that Northback can expect an even bigger public backlash than its predecessor Benga faced.
“A lot of people now really understand the impacts and are very concerned and have really pushed back on that,” she said. “So it really actually is hard for me to fathom how the company thinks that they’re going to get through all of those barriers and get a project.”
But with a government that seems against renewables and that works hard on its fossil fuel agenda, the wishes of the majority of Albertans don’t seem to matter that much.
Let part three of the coal saga begin.
