Dalhousie given $30 million to research onshore natural gas drilling

Dalhousie University received $30 million from the province to research onshore natural gas drilling in Nova Scotia, leaving students and faculty questioning the university’s commitment to its environmental goals. 

The university administered program, announced 10 months after the provincial government lifted a decade-long fracking ban, provides funding for companies to explore Nova Scotia’s “natural gas potential” through geological evaluations — including exploratory drilling and flow testing — according to a Dec. 22 provincial press release.

The program is “designed to understand the potential to explore Nova Scotia’s onshore natural gas resource while ensuring environmental stewardship and transparency,” according to the province’s statement. 

The university will be responsible for determining the criteria for selecting companies, evaluating applicants, helping the chosen applicants navigate regulations and managing communications between the government, stakeholders, industry partners and communities, including Indigenous communities across the province. 

The first steps include the university creating an “oversight committee” of people with energy development backgrounds. This committee will include representation from academics, the public, the Department of Energy, First Nations and the energy industry. 

“The university’s role is to ensure that any exploration is approached with transparency, scientific rigor, and community input,” said Janet Bryson, Dalhousie’s director of media relations in an emailed statement to the Dalhousie Gazette. 

“The university will provide clear, evidence-based information so that future decisions are made with the highest level of public trust and accountability.”  

Dalhousie is expected to produce a final report by the end this year. 

Dalhousie’s role as the administrator and research facilitator of the project has students questioning how the initiative aligns with both the university’s sustainability policies and what they’re learning in the classroom.

“Dalhousie is disinvesting in my education because they are supporting things that their institution has taught me is not good,” says Adlie Leviten-Reid, a fourth-year student organizer with Divest Dal, a student organization lobbying the university to divest from fossil fuels.  

According to Dalhousie’s sustainability policy, the university is committed to “prevent[ing] pollution by reducing harmful emissions and discharges to air, water, and land” and “draw[ing] people to Dalhousie because of sustainability activity.”

“This kind of partnership is contrary … to many of the activities that Dal has signed on to, has spoken about and invested in,” said Daniel Rainham, a health promotion professor at Dal, who holds a master’s degree in earth and atmospheric sciences.

Natural gas produces less carbon dioxide emissions than other fossil fuels, such oil or coal. But it is a significant source of methane, a greenhouse gas. Fracking can contaminate the surrounding environment and ground water supply with toxins. The 

The program aims to reduce high energy costs — Nova Scotia currently imports natural gas from the United States at an “inflated cost” — according to a Dec. 22 statement from Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston, who is also the province’s minister of energy.

“No matter what, if the cost of natural gas comes down (by using local gas), you will benefit,” Houston said in the statement.

More than half a dozen faculty members from Dalhousie’s environmental science and sustainability faculties declined to speak with the Gazette about the natural gas program. 

Julia MacFarlane, a fourth-year environmental science student and co-president of the Environmental Science Program Student Society, says one of the main topics in first-year environmental science courses is the negative impacts of non-renewable energies.

“It’s really disheartening and a step in the wrong direction to have the university partner with the province on this,” she says.

“We talk a lot about how our program is already very depressing and how you can face a lot of eco-anxiety,” says MacFarlane. 

“Here we have our very own school, the people that we’re supposed to look up to and trust to help us through these environmental problems saying, ‘Hey, we’re actually not going to do anything that we’re teaching you.’”

The university did not respond to the Gazette’s multiple requests for comment on whether students will be involved in the research program, prior to publication.

“This would say to me, as a potential student, ‘Dal does have some educational amenities and research amenities that are focused on the climate issue, but its behavior would dictate otherwise,’ said Rainham. “It’s conflicting. It’s contrary.” 

He says it could also hurt faculty who are working on climate and sustainability. 

“They’ve underestimated the impact that it can have on people who work for so long and are trying to promote sustainability at the university.”