The Pembina Institute's Energy Watch program has developed Environment and Energy in the North, a series of six primers, two guides and a listing of resources and contacts to assist Northerners to effectively take part in managing the environmental impacts associated with oil and gas development and to ensure that government and industry are using the best practices available.
Each of the six primers focuses on a different phase of oil and gas development, and includes a basic description of the activities, potential environmental and human health risks, best practices, and opportunities for citizens to get involved in deciding how developers carry out the activity.
- Seismic Exploration — industry activities to create a picture or map of the geology below the Earth?s surface to find oil and gas reserves.
- Land Disposition —the actions companies need to take to get the rights to explore for and produce oil and gas reserves.
- Exploration and Production Drilling —the activities companies perform to first locate oil and gas, then to find out the size and usability of an oil and gas reservoir, and finally to reach the oil and gas using intensive production drilling.
- Well Site Operation —industry practices to remove oil and gas from underground reservoirs and transport it to the surface.
- Oil and Gas Processing —actions companies take to process oil and gas to prepare it for sale.
- Pipeline Construction and Operation — industry activity to set up pipelines that carry oil and gas from the place it comes out of the ground to the places where consumers will use it.
The guides focus specifically on citizens' rights around oil and gas development projects:
- Citizens' Rights and Oil and Gas Development: Northwest Territories — explains the rights that people in the NWT have when oil and gas development occurs on their land. It demonstrates the ways individuals can participate in decisions about oil and gas development by getting involved in the formal regulatory process and consulting directly with the company proposing to do the development work.
- Citizens' Rights and Oil and Gas Development: Yukon Territory — helps Northerners understand the decision-making processes relating to oil and gas development in the Yukon Territory. It provides information about legislation and the federal and territorial agencies that govern oil and gas development. It offers guidance about the opportunities for public involvement in the regulatory approval process. It also provides advice about ways to resolve issues outside this process.
- Resources and Contacts — lists resources and contacts in the Northwest Territories and in the Yukon.
