Environment committee  In Alberta—

Environment committee  I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with the regulations in B.C.

Environment committee  No, absolutely. In the approval, the number of wells is restricted, and if we want to have additional wells, we actually have to apply again in order to add additional wells.

Environment committee  Regarding the expectation, at least for the Horseshoe Canyon coal-bed methane, if it was entirely developed—and I think I mentioned this earlier—there's some talk with numbers as high as 35,000 to 50,000 wells. Certainly no one is anticipating millions of wells for coal-bed meth

Environment committee  Do you specifically mean water well complaints?

Environment committee  I'd be extrapolating on the basis of the information I have, but it would probably be between 100 and 200.

Environment committee  That would be in the last five years, so it would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 20 per year.

Environment committee  I'll speak to that. In Alberta there is something called the base groundwater protection, and the base groundwater protection is set at a depth below which the AGS, the Alberta Geological Society, believes what they consider to be non-saline water does not exist. So below that de

Environment committee  They would only be injected in there if AGS had determined that there is no usable water at that depth or below.

Environment committee  Basic well construction--the base process of casing and cementing has not changed since oil and gas production started in Alberta with Leduc. What has changed is that the technologies and the cements and the materials used have improved greatly. So in modern wells, we're very con

Environment committee  Of course, several tens of thousands of wells get drilled in Alberta every year, and those include several thousand CBM wells. In the vast majority of cases, landowners are very comfortable to have you drill on their land. If they have a concern—

Environment committee  There is a process run by the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board by which you can ask that the well not be drilled. The final decision is made by the Energy and Utilities Board on the basis of the interests of society. It also takes into account the impact on the landowner.

Environment committee  We're not aware in industry of any cases in which contamination has happened.

Environment committee  I think an explanation of the shallow coals in Alberta might help with this. The shallow coals in Alberta, which are the primary commercial target, do not produce water. They're dry coals, so we're not faced with the situation of having to pump water to get the gas to move. The

Environment committee  I think I might just want to add that the well count is far too high. It is not the number that we'll ever achieve drilling coal-bed methane in Alberta.