An international expert on hydro-fracking says a report released by Taranaki Regional Council this week has data missing and is “meaningless”. Professor Avner Vengosh from Duke University last year published a peer-reviewed study in the United States that found clear evidence of water contamination from fracked well sites and more recent preliminary research from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University has found radioactive contamination in streams from 'produced water' well discharges.

Professor Vengosh was responding to a request for feedback on the TRC report and said the report indicates that there is no contamination in the water tested. TAG Oil recently announced successful flows from three new gas wells at the Cheal site near Stratford and water samples were taken by TRC from sites close to the wells.

“Yet the data is not complete as trace element data is missing” said Professor Vengosh. “The real point is that sending water samples to a commercial lab is a wrong approach since it would not provide clear answers on possible water contamination. Without understanding the geology hydrology and water geochemistry the data is meaningless.”

Meanwhile a lawyer based in Vancouver says he was surprised that local authorities in New Zealand were sending staff to Canada to learn about regulations there as serious problems exist with the oversight provided by state and local authorities in British Columbia.

Staff from Gisborne District Council and Hawkes Bay Regional Council last month visited regulators and industry representatives in Canada as a capacity building opportunity in preparation to receive resource consent applications for oil exploration from Apache Corporation.

Speaking to Pipeline News, a Canadian petroleum news publication, Josh Paterson, staff counsel for West Coast Environmental Law in Vancouver, expressed concerns about using B.C. as a positive example or learning tool when it comes to hydraulic fracturing.

“I’m not sure that I would offer British Columbia as a learning tool for other jurisdictions in terms of environmental regulations,” he said. “The position that we’ve been taking over the years is that, in fact, B.C. has got a lot of improvement that needs to happen in terms of its environmental laws.

“And we’re working hard on a whole range of issues to try and make sure that B.C.’s got better environmental assessment processes, better enforcement of the environmental laws that we do have in place. And I would have some concern if another jurisdiction were trying to base its model for something as dangerous as fracking on what B.C.’s practice has been.”

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