It’s not the end, but an evolution

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on September 19, 2019.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@collingallant

Much has been written about the City of Medicine Hat’s decision to permanently close in 2,000 uneconomical gas wells, and make no mistake, there’s much more to be discussed and decided.

Hatters may need time to digest, even come to grips with, shutting down of a substantial portion, in fact almost all, of the municipally owned petroleum exploration company. It’s our heritage, once our pride and for a century a key selling point.

Yet an extended wake will accomplish little.

The immediate multi-year program to stem losses in moves forward next spring, and actual cost savings will arrive sometime after.

There is the abandonment process, unavoidable costs of continuing to operate these well until then, then afterward as land is certified reclaimed.

And we’ve yet to reach that stage of grief in which citizens will likely want answers about the years-long wait between the collapse of prices and this month’s decision to vastly reduce the city’s footprint in the industry that made it famous.

There are also career gas utility employees whose stories are the stories of Medicine Hat itself.

Citizens at large don’t have any idea of what the future looks like.

A small commercial team will remain in the division, where employees currently number about 100. About 500 to 800 wells will remain in operation, including those in Manyberries where a city lawsuit against federal environmental regulations still needs to be solved. (We’re guessing that’s the reason for a 300-well difference in estimates).

So this story is still being written, but so to should Hatters be working on an outline of future chapters in the city’s history.

Medicine Hat was first a railroad town, then a coal town and a cattle and sheep centre. It was promoted as the milling centre of the west when gas first attracted industry. Bricks, clay, artillery shells, tires, garbage trucks, red peppers, petrochemicals and fertilizer sprung forth over the decades.

Now city leaders are quick to point to cryptocurrency and cannabis as the fruits of publicly owned enterprise, this time a power plant expansion.

Council’s longest serving member, Julie Friesen, did her best to reassure citizens about the future of the city during discussions Monday night, essentially saying nothing can last forever.

“We will see opportunities” she said of petroleum, power markets, renewables and well reclamation, with which the general oilpatch wrestles mightily.

“We’ve been prudent to have the money (for well-abandonment), and many in this business do not,” she said. “We’ll be poised and ready to be nimble and ready to take advantage.

“This is not the end of NGPR, it’s an evolution,” she concluded of the natural gas and petroleum resources department.

But life without gas is scary.

It’s so scary that many in town and City Hall as well hung to the hope that prices would recover as they had so many times before.

The private sector in this region knows well that after shale gas hammered pricing in after 2014, new drilling dried up, and major drilling companies closed their shops.

That’s five years ago, and for as long city budgetters have been trying to grapple with a budget devoid of gas dividends.

It’s true that nothing lasts forever, and very little happens simply by the grace of good fortune.

It’s not like city council in 1902 voted to create the gas company then hit the autopilot button in favour of cashing cheques.

It took a lot of work over a century to build up Medicine Hat.

Unless we’re going to close up shop, it’s clear that a lot more work needed now.

(Collin Gallant is a News reporter. To comment on this and other editorials, go to https://www.medicinehatnews.com/opinions.)

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