(Quebec) The Legault government refuses to produce and make public an inventory of the quality of groundwater for all the oil and gas wells drilled in Quebec over the past 20 years.
The Parti Québécois (PQ) presented a motion formulating this request in the House, with the support of the other opposition parties, but the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) refused to debate it.
The government is thus saying no to a request from environmental groups, which was even supported by the association that brings together oil and gas companies in Quebec.
According to the PQ and Quebec solidaire (QS), there is a “danger” for the quality of the water of citizens who live near wells.
This demand from organizations such as Greenpeace and Équiterre follows recent daily revelations The sun : data indicate that the water quality has deteriorated in the Murdochville sector, in the Gaspé, even several years after exploratory drilling for the Bourque project.
The groups deplore in particular the absence of data on groundwater near 19 wells drilled with the hydraulic fracturing method, out of the 31 drilled in the St.Lawrence Valley.
For its part, the Association de l’énergie du Québec (AEQ), which brings together oil and gas companies in particular, is supporting the demand for water quality studies.
In a press release, the AEQ recalls that the government’s Strategic Environmental Study estimated that there was “no contamination in Quebec”.
The AEQ quotes a report on the state of inactive wells which says that 95 wells “will require work”, but that “overall, the problems identified […] do not represent a danger to the health and safety of persons or significant threats to the environment ”.
Instead, environmental groups argue that in Canada, “tens of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells are still awaiting decontamination, the population is grappling with toxic fumes that appear in the form of spontaneous eruptions and not controlled, in particular of hydrogen sulphide which is a substance known to have harmful impacts on human health ”.