Eastern Quebec

Friday October 4, 2013

Unplugged in Bonaventure

160 students from Secondary 3 to 5 from all over the province doing something few teenagers are willing to even consider. For the next 36 hours, they will not be allowed to use technology. No computer, no cell phone, no pods: they all get left at home.

They're participants in the Provincial Leadership Conference where the theme this year is "Unplugged."

Alice Dell is the principal of Bonaventure Polyvalente School and helped organize this weekend's events.

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Categories: Eastern Quebec, Technology, The Gaspé

Monday September 30, 2013

Town of Percé to take over wharf

Back in the spring, we had a dramatic conversation with the mayor of Percé, who, after months of petitioning the federal government for money for repairs to the town's wharf, had just discovered a barrier had been erected at the wharf's entry.

The wharf was in bad shape, and Fisheries & Oceans had decided to ban access for security reasons. The town's mayor Bruno Cloutier was frustrated with the situation, and said he would go knock down the barrier himself with a backhoe.

There's been a recent development in this story. Mayor Cloutier dropped by our studios the mayor himself, who was town for a meeting of Quebec municipalities.

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Categories: Eastern Quebec, Quebec's travelling journalist, The Gaspé, Wharves

Thursday August 29, 2013

Petrolia wants liquefied petroleum gel as fracking fluid, instead of water

The president of Petrolia, André Proulx, raised eyebrows in recent days when he talked about using a different fracking technology in its drilling for oil on Anticosti Island. The method involves using liquefied petroleum gel as the fracking fluid, instead of water.

André Proulx says this technique would solve two big problems. He says fracking with a propane gel would be more effective in getting the oil out of the rock and that it would also be better environmentally than using water, especially on Anticosti, where there would not be any water treatment facility.

The technology was developed in Canada, by the Calgary-based company, GasFrac Energy. It's been used in New Brunswick, on a natural gas field developed by Corridor Resources. Corridor is Petrolia's partner on Anticosti Island. We spoke with Eric Tudor, a chemical engineer who works with GasFrac in Houston, Texas.

The first voice you will hear is that of Petrolia's André Proulx.

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