RCMP terror unit probes pipeline bombing

[Rory27]

MARK HUME

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

    * E-mail Mark Hume
    * | Read Bio
    * | Latest Columns

October 15, 2008 at 8:39 PM EDT

VANCOUVER — Gas industry employees have been put on alert and the RCMP's terrorist unit has been called in following an attempt to blow up a sour gas pipeline near Dawson Creek, in northeastern British Columbia.

Concerns were raised after a hunter found a two-metre-deep crater blasted out of the earth beneath an EnCana line that carries 60 million cubic feet of gas a day to the Steep Rock gas plant.

"This is a targeted attack on the infrastructure of British Columbia," RCMP Sergeant Tim Shields said Wednesday in explaining why the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team has been called in to help other police units with the investigation.

The role of INSET, according to the RCMP, is to "detect, prevent, disrupt and investigate terrorist targets and ultimately bring terrorists to justice prior to serious, violent, criminal acts being perpetrated in Canada and/or abroad."

The EnCana pipeline was damaged but not ruptured by the blast, which occurred at a point where the pipeline emerges from the ground, about 50 kilometres south of Dawson Creek near the Alberta border.

Sgt. Shields said the hunter who found the damage Sunday had passed by the same location the day before, indicating the bomb exploded some time overnight Saturday.

Sgt. Shields said oil and gas workers are "being asked to trust their instincts" and call police if they see any suspicious activity.

The location of the sabotage attempt is in the heart of a booming oil and gas area, where there have been aboriginal blockades and complaints by some landowners about the environmental impacts of development.

Alan Boras, manager of media relations for EnCana, said the company has not been the target of any vandalism or threats.

"This obviously is a very, very rare event. It is a very concerning one, yes. What we've done is inform employees, contractors and people who work in the area for other companies about what's occurred and asked them to increase their vigilance, in their day-to-day efforts, to keep an eye open," Mr. Boras said.

"Our primary concern is the safety of our employees, our contractors, the public, the people who live and operate in our communities," he said.

The attack on the gas line came one day after a small-town newsletter, the Coffee Talk Express, in Chetwynd, received a letter warning oil and gas companies to stop production and leave the area by noon on Saturday.

The letter did not make any specific threats.

Ramona Davidson, owner of the Coffee Talk Express, declined to discuss the letter, which she did not publish, instead turning it over to the local RCMP detachment.

"I'm not allowed to comment on any part of it. I know you want the story and so do I," she said Wednesday.

Maggie Behn, editor of the Chetwynd Echo/Pioneer newspaper, said she hasn't heard any animosity directed at the gas industry.

"It's definitely unexpected," she said of the attack on EnCana. "The biggest thing we get outrage over is wind farms."

Ms. Behn said there has been speculation the sabotage attempt is linked to the theft of 170 kilograms of Vibrogel Dynamite sticks and detonation caps from a site near Chetwynd over the summer.

But Constable Craig Douglass, of the RCMP North District, said police are not making that link.

Gwen Johanson, a representative of Custodians of the Peace, a group that has been fighting for increased landowner rights in the region, said lots of people are concerned about the oil and gas industry.

Many landowners are upset because they have no control over subsurface rights, Ms. Johanson said, but she hasn't heard anyone make threats against the industry.

"We don't want to go that route," she said.

The sabotage site is near an area where a road was blockaded for two days earlier this year by the Kelly Lake Cree Nation. That blockade was meant to highlight native concerns about health and safety issues raised by oil and gas exploration in the area.

A band spokesman could not be reached for comment yesterday.

The Kelly Lake area is just across the B.C. border from Beaverlodge, Alta., where there were several acts of vandalism aimed at the oil and gas industry – including one attempt to blow up a sour gas well – in the late 1990s.