Canada Won’t Fill The Gas Gap

Relying on Canadian natural gas to fulfill the Northwest’s growing demand for energy is misguided, the executive director of a Calgary-based environmental group said Monday.

Michael Sawyer of the Rocky Mountain Ecosystem Coalition said prices for Canadian gas must rise sharply in the future if all the reserves that have been identified are to be brought on line.

The looming price increases belie representations by gas supporters that the fuel will be a cheap resource for years to come, he said.

The Northwest utility industry has embraced natural gas as a substitute for electricity for space and water heating, and as a way to generate electricity if salmonprotection plans limit access to hydropower.

Sawyer, a former environmental consultant to the gas industry, is in the Spokane area to meet with groups and individuals opposing development of large gas-fired generating stations.

One is meeting scheduled for tonight at W315 Mission. Another was held Monday night in Rathdrum, the site of one generator operated by Washington Water Power Co., and the potential site of a second.

Sawyer said the generators are relatively cheap to construct, but their long-term economics depend on inexpensive gas.

Industry projections that electricity produced by burning gas will be cheaper than other new resources for the foreseeable future are inaccurate, he said.

Gas will not only become more expensive, Sawyer said, the environmental costs of its development will escalate as well.

Gas development requires huge, environmentally destructive infrastructure in Canada, and burning of the fuel pours emissions into the atmosphere, he said.

“This is not a good move for the region,” Sawyer said. “We’re just about to go into a period of steep price increases. Gas will not be the wonder fuel it is being represented as.”

He added that domestic opposition to exporting gas is mounting, which could make Canada a less reliable supplier.

He also said increased reliance on natural gas, while looking for way to protect endangered salmon runs, transfers environmental impacts from the United States to Canada.

Jim DiPeso, a spokesman for the Northwest Conservation Act Coalition, said the region should be looking to renewable energy.

Conservation, wind energy and other measures could yield as much as 600 megawatts in new energy by 2000, he said, about what the Spokane area consumes.

The coalition is one of the sponsors of tonight’s meeting.

Bill Harlan, a vice president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, discounted some of Sawyer’s concerns.

Alberta and British Columbia have replenished gas reserves as fast as they are tapped for the last five years, he said.

And every time the price surges, as it did two years ago, producers rush to sink new wells, driving prices back down, he said.

“There’s a lot of natural gas out there in the ground,” Harlan said, adding that most is found in areas where there is other activity, not in pristine areas.