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Flathead Valley: park vs. development B.C. park that borders Montana might contain an oil and gas bonanza Don Whiteley Petroleum News Contributing Writer
In a conflict that will resonate with Alaskans, a small piece of British Columbia’s southeast corner, just north of the Montana border, is caught in a park vs. development fight.
Perhaps not quite as high profile as the push to drill on the coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, this one has all the elements for a similar battle, including issues that cross the U.S.-Canada boundary.
The federal and provincial governments are jockeying over an appropriate role for national parks development in the province; the local member of the British Columbia Legislature believes his constituents want no part of a national park. Added to the mix are First Nations claims in the entire region.
And hanging over the whole debate is the province’s new-found love for the oil and gas sector, coupled with some geologists reports that suggest there might be an oil and gas bonanza deep in the geological formations below the contested landscape. Flathead Valley donnybrook Welcome to the Flathead Valley, and a looming donnybrook over what happens to it. Satisfying the various special interests, each of which has its own dream about how best to use the area, will likely be impossible.
It could well end up as another clash of land-use philosophies for which British Columbia is becoming world-renowned. The provincial government’s hopes for a major province-wide expansion in the oil and gas sector might founder on the rocks of land use issues like this one.
Bringing this to a head now is the fact that Ottawa and Victoria are indeed actively negotiating the fate of this land, and a new national park is on the table for discussion. The two governments are said to be very close to signing a memorandum of understanding that could set in motion a lengthy, and detailed, Parks Canada feasibility process aimed at creating the new park.
Joyce Murray, British Columbia’s Minister of Water, Land and Air Protection, confirmed that negotiations with the federal government over a national parks strategy are under way, and she expects a resolution soon.
That would suit Bob Peart just fine. As executive director of the British Columbia chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wildlife Society, Peart has been pushing for 20 years to get this piece of the province added to Parks Canada’s mountain parks system. Akemina-Kishenina Provincial Park, which sits on the border adjacent to Waterton, would be rolled into the new national park. Hot topic in region Bill Bennett, Liberal MLA for the region, is not at all convinced his government will do that, although he agreed that “there is a rumor to that effect.”
“This is a very hot issue in the region,” he said. “It’s my impression as the MLA that there is a large majority of the people to whom I’m accountable who think the provincial land use planning process is giving us all the management we need; and that a federal park is unnecessary, and also the wrong kind of management for that piece of territory.”
Issues in this battle are concentrated more on hunting, trapping and guiding activities (the area has very rich, diverse and healthy wildlife populations) and the potential for energy, specifically oil and gas. The southeast part of the province is already home to several coal mines, and EnCana Energy’s pilot project for coal bed methane in the Elk Valley further north.
Peart says the proposed boundaries for the park have been carefully drawn to make sure they don’t embrace any coal potential (Fording is the main operator in the area). Kishenehn basin could have significant potential But oil and gas is a different question entirely – and the Flathead Valley is already on one unidentified U.S. company’s radar screen because of a geological formation called the Kishenehn basin. The area was identified in a geological study done for the energy ministry two years ago on oil and gas potential, and it said this:
“The Flathead area has significant hydrocarbon potential in varied play types.” The study goes on to single out the Kishenehn basin as just like similar basins in China which have been prolific oil producers. The as-yet unnamed U.S. oil company has apparently identified a play that stretches from Montana north to the Elk Valley — and right through the Flathead.
“The Geological Survey of Canada has estimated a mean gas resource potential of 635 billion cubic feet and an oil potential of 382 million barrels,” says an Energy Ministry report on the basin, adding that 17 percent of the play lies in British Columbia.
Will that get in the way of a new national park? Last month’s announcement by the British Columbia Energy Ministry of a new set of royalty incentives designed to speed up oil and gas drilling activity (in part, by encouraging exploration in new areas) is a clear indication that Victoria wants much more out of the sector.
On the other hand, a park in the Flathead Valley has been a dream of environmentalists for decades, and that includes activists in the United States who see it as a natural extension of the already much larger Glacier National Park in Montana.
“I’m aware that there’s controversy over this,” says British Columbia Parks Minister Murray. “I would expect the feds to address that. They have to work with people.”
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