A new run is being taken at one of the tallest hurdles confronting natural gas supply development in Canada, fear of emissions from “sour” reserves, laced with lethal hydrogen-sulphide, which make up about a third of Canada’s gas resources. This time the scientific effort will be quartered in the northeastern United States in an independent laboratory far removed from conflicts in the western provinces.

Fear of sour gas is at the heart of numerous high-profile disputes, ranging from a wave of attacks on field installations that led to the imprisonment of northern Alberta religious commune leader Wiebo Ludwig to long regulatory delays and outright cancellations of projects. After decades of frustration for industry and communities alike over inconclusive ecological-statistical studies, the next effort to measure sour-gas hazards takes a much more direct approach.

The question remains the same: how much harm is done by exposure to hydrogen-sulphide? But in the new study, volunteers will submit to contact with the substance in a glass chamber and through breathing masks, reported Geoff Granville, toxicology and material safety manager at sour-gas producer Shell Canada Ltd.

The laboratory, located in northern New York State at Rutgers University, will duplicate exposure to low-level concentrations of hydrogen-sulphide liable to be experienced by workers at sour-gas operations and by communities around them. The volunteers will inhale concentrations of 0.05, 0.5 and five parts per million hydrogen-sulphide for three periods of two hours each. After breathing the sour air, the subjects will be tested for reactions such as their ability to perform tasks, the condition of their nervous systems, and whether they develop a tolerance for the gas and its rotten-egg odor. As a cross-check, the volunteers will also be exposed just to the smell, generated by other agents and not hydrogen-sulphide.

The new study marks a departure because it will be experimental and clinical, rather than yet another attempt to establish statistical correlations between health issues and industrial emissions. The traditional approach of measuring the presence of sour gas, investigating the health of ecological “markers” such as vegetation and animals, then trying to establish statistical correlations, has repeatedly ended in inconclusive reports. To industry, the lack of demonstrated links between hydrogen-sulphide and health conditions has been a good-news story at a scientific level but a weak answer to critics, who invariably maintain that the studies were inconclusive because they were incomplete.

The new US$1.3-million research effort, scheduled to be under way this spring, was launched by the American Petroleum Institute. Canadians, even more affected by hydrogen-sulphide because it occurs in about one-third of their gas production, are jumping on board. The Petroleum Technology Alliance Canada — a coalition of industry, government and academic agencies — has pledged an initial C$100,000 (US$625,000) to support the API program and is seeking additional contributions. The targets of the fund-raising include the Alberta Department of Health, where PTAC hopes the new direct technique will fare better than a home-grown, larger sour-gas research effort by the Western Interprovincial Scientific Studies Association.

Although heavily supported by the petroleum industry, the WISSA effort lost its initial support from Alberta Health late last year. The loss was partly due to provincial budget cuts but also happened because the Canadian research continues to use traditional ecological survey methods rather than directly assessing cause-and-effect relationships, said Granville. The WISSA group is still running a C$11-million (US$7 million) study of sour gas, livestock and wildlife, but the human health item on its C$19-million (US$12-million), four-year agenda has been shelved while it tries to raise the money.

At a PTAC environmental research and technology forum, Granville reported that the U.S.-led program will tackle one of the biggest headaches associated with the complicated sour-gas issue: “neurobehavioral performance.” The phrase is used by professionals to refer to a syndrome also known as environmental flu or the 20th-Century disease: “neurological feel-bad types of things,” Granville said.

Those who have complained about the effects of sour gas have said things like, “My asthma gets worse,” or “I have nausea and malaise; I feel bad; I can’t concentrate; or I can’t hold a job.”

Sour gas is more pervasive in Canada, where producers routinely encounter reserves harbouring hydrogen-sulphide content in a range of 30-50%. Sour reserves are especially common in the regions where the industry is expanding, along the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains from the U.S. border up to northeastern British Columbia and the southern Northwest Territories.

But PTAC observed the U.S. industry has a good reason of its own to improve the science of sour gas – a legal system where irritated communities and landowners are much more prone to going to court with complaints than in Canada, where the issue remains mostly confined to the regulatory arena and serves to delay or stop projects rather than generate damage awards.

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