Gas pipelines owned by EnCana in Canada have been the target of sabotage twice in the past week, probably with explosives. The sabotage might be linked to intense local opposition to increasing resource extraction in the area.

On the morning of Sunday October 12, EnCana workers discovered a crater in the dirt next to a dented part of a pipeline in an area near Dawson Creek, in the Peace River region of northeast BC. On Wednesday October 15, a second action was carried out, this time rupturing the pipeline. Because workers had been on high alert since the first incident, they discovered the leak before much of the gas (which is toxic and flammable) could escape or affect nearby communities. Company officials deny that public safety was placed at risk.

Keeping in mind that police accounts are not always trustworthy, it still seems useful to quote RCMP Sergeant Tim Shields :

“There certainly appears to have been [a bomb]. We have a crater in the ground about four feet across and there is damage to the pipeline. It’s dented in. There was also a small leak that was quickly contained by pipeline workers. This is within 20 kilometers of [and] has all the earmarks of the first incident.”

There were no witnesses to either action, so police are unsure exactly how the sabotage was carried out.

Increased oil and gas extraction in the Peace River area has been strongly opposed by locals, and has sparked above ground resistance by the Kelly Lake Cree Nation as well as white residents. In 2006, EnCana built a new gas plant (Steep Rock), while BP has plans for 132 new wells near Kelly Lake.

Not long ago, the Coffee Talk Express, a local publication in the small town of Chetwynd, received a letter warning oil and gas companies to stop all production and pull out of the area by noon on Saturday October 11 (the first act of sabotage took place that night), although no threats were specified. The writer accused the oil and gas industry of being “terrorists … endangering our families with crazy expansion of deadly gas wells.”