NB Power’s financial woes should tip the scales in favour of shale gas
Author of the article: Tom Mueller First Published in Brunswick News: https://tj.news/new-brunswick/opinion-its-time-for-n-b-to-get-fracking
NB Power is finally under independent scrutiny, thanks to a flood of complaints about December’s eye-popping electricity bills — some reportedly soaring by hundreds of dollars. But don’t expect relief. Rates will only climb higher as politicians cobble together one stopgap fix after another for the debt-ridden utility. Meanwhile, net zero drifts further into the realm of wishful thinking.
New Brunswick governments can’t resist meddling in NB Power. The botched Hydro-Québec sale, vote-chasing rate freezes, sweetheart industrial deals, and spiraling costs when refurbishments are delayed – they all add up. The result? A utility drowning in debt while politicians duck responsibility.
NB Power’s latest project — a 400-megawatt natural gas plant in Scoudouc, locked into a costly power purchase agreement — is destined to be another boondoggle. It will only push the province deeper into debt, saddling ratepayers with exorbitant costs bloated by profit margins on open-market natural gas prices.
Meanwhile, right beneath our feet lies an untapped trove of cleaner, cheaper shale gas, were we to unlock it via fracking. Still, we senselessly import the stuff at a premium, handing foreign multinationals a windfall for what should be ours at cost.
According to retired geologist Peter Churcher, the former president of a Calgary oil and gas firm who provided shale economic data to the New Brunswick government in 2022, the McCully Gas Field southeast of Sussex alone holds an estimated 72 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. It’s already connected to pipelines. But thanks to a government-imposed moratorium, it sits unfracked while we continue to import natural gas at a premium.
Churcher says fracking those reserves would require 347 new wells from surface pads located on approximately 60 acres of easily reclaimable land. A mere 6.1 percent of these reserves could yield $16.2 billion in net revenue, his data shows.
But let’s talk about the elephant in the living room – can fracking be done safely?
If you listen to the critics, and you’d think using this technique would propel us into an industrial apocalypse — Mordor with methane, where the air chokes, rivers run toxic, groundwater turns to poison, and kitchen taps belch fire.
But the facts tell a different story. Not all fracking is created equal — there’s a crucial distinction between shallow and deep-well operations.
Shale formations in the McCully Gas Field lie at depths sometimes exceeding three kilometres. Locked beneath dense, impermeable rock, gas and fracking fluids remain securely contained — unlike shallow wells, whose risk of leakage can be significant.
A 2019 federal study of test wells found no evidence of groundwater contamination in the McCully region. Layer upon layer of redundant fail-safes, including thick concentric steel and reinforced cement casings, serve to shield pristine aquifers, while wastewater would be recycled. Air quality is assured thanks to electric compressors and advanced methane monitoring. And because McCully’s gas is already pipeline-ready, there is no need for flaring once wells start producing.
What about earthquakes? This issue has arisen particularly in British Columbia, where seismic risk is a constant concern. Contrast that with southern New Brunswick, officially classified as geologically inactive by the Geological Survey of Canada. When industries recycle and properly dispose of wastewater, fault risk remains minimal and easily managed.
Let’s all agree — net zero is a must. It’s also expensive and far beyond the reach of a small, debt-strapped province like New Brunswick. Renewables? Unreliable. Nuclear? Reliable but brutally expensive. Neither could be fully operational for years.
Natural gas from deep wells is the common-sense bridge fuel — providing steady, reliable baseload power while producing a fraction of the emissions from coal or oil. Crucially, deep-well fracking minimizes leakage risks far better than shallow wells, benefiting from superior sealing, higher pressure retention, and greater depth. When properly contained, natural gas combustion cuts greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent compared to coal in electricity generation and roughly 25 percent compared to oil. Yet, instead of embracing this pragmatic solution, ideological purists dismiss it outright, prioritizing dogma over energy security and environmental progress.
McCully Field’s shale gas is nearly pure methane, with no need for costly carbon dioxide or hydrogen sulfide scrubbing. Now add thousands of jobs, soaring revenues, and a chance to position the province as a world-class LNG exporter, lowering other countries’ greenhouse gas emissions. What’s not to like?
It gets better: The bedrock geological map of New Brunswick indicates extensive deep underground formations that can permanently sequester waste greenhouse gases under impermeable basalt caps, effectively dropping emissions even further.
Yet the McCully Gas Field still sits idle—a monument to squandered opportunity. And that’s just for starters. New Brunswick sits atop other potential deep-well shale gas reserves, but instead, we’re sleepwalking into financial ruin, our debt piling up like compound interest on a payday loan. Without tapping natural gas revenues in the interim, the prospect of financing a transition to net zero collapses into delusion.
New Brunswick could be flush with resource royalties, its debt wiped clean — maybe even, dare to dream, at last join the ranks of Canada’s “have” provinces. But instead, we’re handed the same stale script: brace for soaring power bills and fork over more in taxes.
So, what’s the holdup? The usual suspects — eco-zealots chasing magical fixes, social-licence grifters extorting endless concessions, fear-mongering Cassandras, and feckless governments too timid to govern.
New Brunswick deserves better. It’s time to unlock our resources. It’s time to get fracking.
Tom Mueller is a former biomedical researcher, retired teacher, and columnist for Brunswick News.