The territorial government has announced plans to pave the way for hydraulic fracturing in the Liard basin in southeast Yukon.

The government will focus on the area “for further research and possible shale development,” it stated in a release Thursday.

The announcement came as part of a response to a January report from a legislative committee on fracking and in the wake of internal documents suggesting a preemptive push toward the controversial gas extraction method in the Yukon.

The government said it accepts all 21 of the report’s recommendations, which largely addressed the need to gather more information about fracking and its impact in the Yukon.

It stressed public consultations and “government-to-government” dialogue with First Nations.

“A key element of the government’s position is that any proposed hyraulic fracturing activity would require the support of affected First Nations,” says a government news release.

The path forward also includes an economic study, expanded groundwater monitoring and seismic data collection as well as expert advice on regulatory processes for human health and environmental safety.

“Yukon government supports development of a strong and robust oil and gas industry in Yukon and recognizes that the development of these resources could contribute to significant economic growth and diversification of the Yukon economy,” the government stated in its response to the report by the Select Committee Regarding the Risks and Benefits of Hydraulic Fracturing.

Don Murphy, head of bedrock geology at the Yukon Geological Survey, called the Liard deposit “world class.”

The basin extends well into B.C., with several wells already in place South of 60. It contains 176 trillion cubic metres of gas in the B.C. portion alone, with more than one-third of that recoverable, officials said at a media briefing this morning.

The shale deposits sit in two reservoirs running between one and four kilometres underground.

Don Roberts, head of Yukoners Concerned About Oil and Gas Exploration/Development and a former health minister in the Liberal government, said he was “disappointed (but) not surprised” by the government’s plan.

“We’ve always felt that they were going to go down this path right from the beginning,” he told the Star today.

He suspected the focus on Liard would not attract as much direct opposition as developments closer to Whitehorse. “But that’s just the foothold, that’s just the beginning,” he said.

The advocacy group Roberts leads has collected about 8,000 signatures for anti-fracking petitions submitted to the legislature.

“Yukoners are very intelligent and very inquisitive and they also do a lot of research.”

This week, an email apparently written by Energy, Mines and Resources deputy minister George Ross and distributed by the NDP noted “a ‘pilot fracing/science project’ in the liard basin [sic].”

Energy Minister Scott Kent told media the pilot project has been cancelled.

Documents released accidentally last month may also have tipped the government’s hand on fracking, and came in the wake of a divided committee and inconclusive evidence on shale development’s environmental impact.

An Energy department bureaucrat emailed a CBC Yukon reporter the draft of a PowerPoint presentation — intended for the assistant deputy minister to deliver to caucus — and a speech bound for the minister’s desk.

The internal presentation discussed “moving forward” on “multi-stage horizontal fracking,” particularly in the Eagle Plain and Liard oil and gas basins.

The speech, ultimately intended for public ears, did not directly reference that prospect, however.

Yukon NDP Leader Liz Hanson saw the documents, along with a $42-million LNG plant, lifting a curtain on back-room policy.

“It’s really clear that they’ve quietly been planning to bring fracking to the Yukon. It’s an open secret except with the Yukon public,” she said in an interview March 9.

Hanson added that while the drafts may not yet have been approved by higher-ups, a government department would not prepare documents of this sort “without having clear directions that’s what the minister and cabinet are wanting to consider.”

Sandy Silver, the Liberal leader who sat on the committee from its formation in May 2013, was unequivocal.

“Committee members heard overwhelmingly from Yukoners that the social licence for hydraulic fracturing is not there,” he said in a release last month.

The Klondike MLA said the government is taking “great creative licence” by supposedly reading the select committee’s report as “implying support” because it does not ban fracking outright.

The Yukon has eight onshore sedimentary basins that underlie nearly one-sixth of the territory. Two — the Liard and Eagle Plain basins — are being developed.

Northern Cross Yukon and the Vuntut Development Corp. are exploring the possibility of operating a refinery in the Eagle Plains area.

EFLO Yukon, which purchased the Kotaneelee gas field in Liard in 2012, is on record saying it wants to explore opportunities in the gas field using unconventional drilling methods – fracking.

Two other basins in the Peel and Beaufort-Mackenzie regions have “high potential for shale oil and/or gas,” the government confirmed yesterday.

The Yukon Conservation Society and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) have offered clashing views of the potential impact of hydraulic fracturing in the territory.

One side cites health and environmental risks and limited economic opportunities, while the other stresses safe practices and major economic benefits.

Sebastian Jones, an energy analyst with the conservation society, claimed that more than 400 peer-reviewed scientific papers on the subject have been published around the globe since the fracking committee was struck in May 2013.

“All but about half a dozen have concluded that there’s risks and that the dangers outweigh the benefits.

“The economics of fracking are terrible,” Jones said. “There’s hundreds of drilling rigs that have gone idle in the last few months (across western Canada).”

He noted the boom-bust nature of many resource industries, a cycle Yukoners have known well since the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898.

Fracking may be less feasible North of 60 than in places like B.C. due to distance and a lack of infrastructure, he added.

Both Jones and a CAPP representative cited a study released last May to bolster their respective cases.

The Council of Canadian Academies found that too little is known about the impacts of fracking to simply label it safe and suggested further research.

In a 260-page report commissioned by the federal government, the expert panel also concluded that key parts of provincial regulatory regimes “are not based on strong science” and remain virtually unsupported by federal regulation.

CAPP spokesman Markus Ermisch noted the report — like the Yukon legislature’s select committee — does not recommend an outright ban on fracking.

Ermisch insisted regulations throughout western Canada, where the vast majority of fracking occurs, were sound.

“If you have robust, proper, effective regulations in place and you combine these with good operating practices, then our record is a good one.”

In several provinces, publicly reporting the constituents of the fracking fluid flowing through the well bores is now mandatory.

Hydraulic fracturing involves pumping pressurized water, sand and chemicals underground to release natural gas trapped within the shale rock.

Over the last 60 years, roughly 215,000 fracking wells have been drilled in Alberta, B.C. and Sakatchewan.

“None of these fracturing jobs have resulted in a demonstrated impact on drinking water,” Ermisch claimed.

“When you drill a well, what’s absolutely key ... is that the well bores are constructed properly.”

Hydraulic fracturing, the bulk of which currently takes place in B.C., usually occurs about 2,000 to 3,000 metres underground, while water wells usually draw from about 60 to 120 metres down.

“There’s quite a thick layer that separates the fracking area from any overlying aquifers,” Ermisch noted.

In the North, any economic boon deriving from royalties, taxes and jobs remains difficult to gauge, since relatively little is known about existing natural gas reserves.

“It’s difficult to say exactly what the economic benefits would be,” Ermisch said.

Public angst remains around the supposed possibility of earthquakes as well as water contamination and methane release resulting from fracking.

Incidents of groundwater contamination have always involved breaches of contemporary regulations, Ermisch said. Impermeable rocks often divide fracking zones from the groundwater above.

A Cornell University study from 2011 found the shale gas cycle emits up to twice as much methane — a powerful greenhouse gas — as conventional gas extraction cycles from production to consumer. That would make the method dirtier than coal or oil, the study suggests.

Another study from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, however, concluded the fracking cycle releases less than one-third that amount.

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