Under the feet of Prince George residents, Vanderhoof residents, and almost everywhere in between are lakes of natural gas.
The area underground in the central interior is known in geology circles as the Nechako Basin. Little is known of its shape and capacity, but it was the focus of a major study by the province's subterranean science agency Geoscience B.C.
With earthquakes on the provincial coast bringing local underground features to the forefront, the prospect of drilling for petroleum treasure follows. What Geoscience B.C. knows now better than ever is that indeed there is a lot of local subsurface wealth, but it will not be easy to draw out.
"We know the oil and gas is in there, the problem is delineating the trap, the chambers where it has pooled," said Carlos Salas, Geoscience B.C.'s vice-president of oil and gas research. "It's financially risky. You can drill and miss the accumulation and that is an expensive mistake. If I were an oil and gas company or a mining company, I wouldn't drill until I had good three-dimensional surveying over it. We have good 2D work, but more work is needed."
To get the 3D data corporations can better rely on for their exploration work, a series of 2D sonar lines are beamed into the earth in a grid, at angles, to create a 3-dimensional cross section of the terrain.
Making this work difficult in the Nechako Basin region is the material our local earth is made of. The surface features are dominated by ages-old glacial and river activity (the cutbanks, Connaught Hill, etc.) but underground the dominant feature is volcanic. The sub-skin of the area is a buried mountain range of ultra-ancient lava. Lava rock is pocked with millions of small holes, making it hard for sonar to read.
"Its a tough one," said Salas. "You've got these volcanics which can vary between three to 200 metres. They are about 17 million years old. Within these underground undulations in the terrain there are basins that look quite promising for containing both oil and gas. First you have to find structures - underground hills with holes in them into which the oil and gas migrates and accumulates. Find these pools, and you have a successful well. Miss by even a few inches and you've invested all that money and time and resources finding nothing."
To reduce the misses, Geoscience B.C. invested their independent agency's money, and acquired helping funds from Northern Development Initiatives Trust and other sources. It allowed them to focus intensive research on a test patch of about 30 kilometres. They began fundraising for the project as early as 2008 and their finished report on the focus-project was done this past summer.
"At the end of the day it was a world class project, and we do have a much better understanding of the basin's architecture," said Salas. "It is still a very tough basin to work because even with the academic firepower it is still difficult to image."
The private sector is not looking at the Nechako Basin for immediate development simply because there are world-class natural gas plays in easier locations like B.C.'s northeast. Salas said the industry would only inch towards Prince George if the burden of exploration was left exclusively on the shoulders of petroleum companies. By doing this independent, transparent and universally available research as a public agency, it catalyzes that industry, gives mining firms more knowledge for related exploration they are doing for minerals and metals, and is held in the public hand for all time. Geoscience B.C.'s work is freely available for the interests of government, academia, communities, First Nations and industry alike.
Salas said one day, soon or long-term, it will be worth a great deal to the local economy of Prince George.
