Alberta Environment Standard for Baseline Water Well Testing for CBM Operations, Science Review Panel Final Report prepared for Alberta Environment by Dr. Cathy Ryan, University of Calgary. December 5, 2008. Panel: Alex Blyth, Bernard Mayer, Carl Mendoza, Karlis Muehlenbachs.
As of December 2007, the Baseline Water Well Testing (BWWT) Program database included 4349 entries from water wells located predominantly between Calgary and Edmonton. This region is already heavily drilled for conventional oil and gas wells. The region also has some CBM wells that were completed before the initiation of the BWWT Program on May 1, 2006. Considering this pre-existing resource extraction activity, BWWT samples are not necessarily ‘true baseline’, or pristine, samples of un-impacted groundwater. In reality the BWWT samples may represent groundwater that has been impacted by previous petroleum exploration and development activities, early CBM activities, and/or other anthropogenic impacts…. When sampling monitoring wells for gas concentrations, total dissolved gas pressures should be measured during monitoring. Total dissolved gas pressure is directly related to in situ as concentration. Preliminary data from the Rosebud, Alberta area suggest groundwater gas concentrations are being underestimated by a factor of three when TDGP is not measured (Roy et al., 2008). [Emphasis added]
Landowner Jessica Ernst sues EnCana (Ovintiv) and Alberta government regulators over water contamination
