ROSEBUD, Alta. – An Alberta landowner group is challenging the ownership of coalbed methane reserves.
United Landowners of Alberta says it is prepared to sue the province over its belief that this form of unconventional natural gas belongs to title holders because it is a renewable resource similar to solar, geothermal or wind energy.
The group says the gas is the result of anaerobic micro-organisms digesting coal and emitting methane.
“Coalbed methane does not belong to the province. It is a renewable resource that is made every day. It is not the same as conventional gas,” Don Bester, a producer from Innisfail, Alta., and chair of the Alberta Surface Rights Federation, told a recent meeting in Rosebud in the heart of coalbed methane drilling in the province
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“It belongs to the landowner. It is the same as solar energy as a renewable power. We don’t just own the first six inches of the plow depth. We own from heaven to hell.”
The Canadian Society for Unconventional Natural Gas estimates that 150 to 500 trillion cubic feet of coalbed methane gas are available in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin, with the potential to contribute up to 10 percent of Canada’s current natural gas production.
If a court agrees that the gas belongs to landowners rather than the provincial government, landowners would have the right to negotiate with energy companies and collect royalties as well as determine whether drilling takes place.
“We are not opposing drilling of the gas; we are opposing who owns it,” Bester said.
Getting to court costs money, and the group, which represents landowner groups and individuals, hopes to enlist enough members willing to pay a $100 membership fee so that the government takes it seriously.
“The only way you can have an effective voice in this province is to be large,” he said.
Bester said well density is increasing with unknown environmental impacts.
“If this keeps on we won’t have any farmland to farm.”
Identifying the source
At the heart of the argument is the source of the gas. In the sedimentary basin it is found in shallow formations and was likely formed through a biological process called methanogenesis, which is the formation of methane by micro-organisms known as methanogens that work without oxygen.
Bowden farmer Glenn Norman of the Pine Lake Surface Rights Action Group said the formations could be seeded with the correct chemical compounds to produce more gas at a time when conventional reserves are depleting.
Karen Budwill, a microbiologist with the Alberta Research Council, is investigating biogenic gas, which exists in deposits throughout the world.
She has not spoken directly with the group but is aware of their challenge.
Her laboratory work mixed an organic nitrogen compound with crushed coal from Alberta formations to stimulate methane production.
“It was an enriched culture of coal in ideal laboratory conditions so it happens quite quickly,” she said.
In nature, the process could take millions of years to produce gas through the thermogenic process using heat and pressure or biogenic processes where microbes digest the coal and create methane.
Biogenic gas appears in shallow geological formations, but research indicates the necessary bacteria could exist at much deeper levels, as was discovered in deep gold mines in South Africa. Researchers do not know how much coal is used in the process, but they do know the bacteria can use only certain parts and in certain geological formations.
Private companies, universities and the U.S. Geological Service are also looking at the biogenic process to produce more energy.
“Lately in the U.S. the amount of people looking at this has really accelerated,” Budwill said.
The private firm LUCA Technologies of Colorado found that hydrocarbon deposits such as coal beds, organic-rich shale and oil fields have the potential to produce large amounts of methane on an ongoing basis using naturally occurring populations of anaerobic micro-organisms that exist within many of these deposits.
