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A second gas pipeline bombing within a week in British Columbia, Canada, has raised worries of ecoterrorism in the region,
which suffered a similar series of attacks in the late 1990s.
The Globe and Mail reports that the latest bombing took place near a transfer station owned by energy company EnCana outside Tomslake in northeastern British Colombia, in the same area as another blast that occurred last weekend. Several Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) units, including
the antiterrorism unit, are investigating the explosion, which caused only minor damage.
The first attempt to sabotage an EnCana gas pipeline occurred Saturday night, about 50 kilometres south of Dawson Creek, and
the RCMP reported that damage from the second blast, at a nearby location, was discovered yesterday morning. …
While EnCana described the incident yesterday as “a natural gas leak at a field facility,” RCMP Sergeant Tim Shields described
it as a second sabotage attempt.
“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 kilometres of the first incident … and it
has all the earmarks of the first incident,” Sgt. Shields said.
“We don’t know exactly when it occurred because there were no witnesses who heard the explosion.”
The National Post reports that police believe the explosions may be related to a letter sent last week
to the Dawson Creek Daily News, which demanded “EnCana and all other
oil and gas interests” leave Tomslake. “We will no longer negotiate
with terrorists which you are as you keep endangering our families with
crazy expansion of deadly gas wells in our home lands,” the letter
said.
The Province reports that at least one expert is calling the explosions acts of terrorism, though police are hesitant to describe them that way, at least for the moment.
“Terrorism
means the threat or use of violence to influence policy and that’s what
is happening here,” said [Former Canadian Security Intelligence Service
lawyer David ] Harris, director of international and terrorist
intelligence for Ottawa-based Insignis Research. …
RCMP Sgt. Tim Shields said although he is not using the “terrorism” word, “there is no group or individual that we won’t look
at.”
“We are going on the assumption that the two explosions are linked, given their close proximity and the short time line between
the delivery of the note” and the two subsequent blasts, said Shields.
John Thompson, president of the Mackenzie Institute, a Canadian thinktank that studies political instability and organized violence issues, told The Vancouver Sun
that attacks like these have “happened before and will happen again.
It’s almost like the price of doing business…. The attacks aren’t
that dangerous, yet. Pipelines break down for other reasons as well.
The oil and gas industry is [accustomed] to ‘ecotage’ and sabotage of
various kinds.”
