Wiebo Ludwig - Confrontations With The Oil and Gas Industry - AEC West Bombings

AEC West Bombings

In the early 1990s oil companies in northern Alberta began building sour gas wells on land they owned near Trickle Creek. Ludwig linked the flared gas and leaks from the wells with stillbirths, deformations, and miscarriages that began to occur in the community at the time, and began to protest sour gas development near his community. He appealed to the government to regulate sour gas extraction near the community, but the government did not respond. Ludwig then produced a video titled "Home Sour Home" in order to gain broader attention. In an effort to gain the attention of the government he appeared at the government offices of Grande Prairie and poured sour crude oil on the lobby carpet. His appeals for government intervention were not successful.

There were hundreds of acts of vandalism against natural gas sites across northern Alberta in the 1990s. Many of these attacks were against AEC West, the main company operating near Trickle Creek. The company negotiated with Ludwig in an attempt to buy his farm; but, two days after these negotiations failed, two of its wells 30 km from the farm were destroyed by explosions. A few days after these explosions, Ludwig stated: "If the oil companies run roughshod over your lives, you have to take defensive action against them, whatever is necessary... You can’t just let them kill your children."

A teenage girl, Karman Willis, was killed in Trickle Creek in an incident that occurred in 1999 when someone shot at a truck which had been driven onto the property by a group of joyriding teens. Ludwig called 911, explaining to the operator that shots had been fired. The subsequent police investigation suggested that the bullet hit the bottom of the truck, then ricocheted up and hit the girl in the chest. A bullet also hit a second teen in the arm, but he survived. Police were never able to identify the shooter, and were not able to recover the weapon. No one was ever charged with the death, and local residents still refer to the exact nature of events that happened on the night of the shooting as "a mystery".

In 1998 the RCMP charged Ludwig for an attack on a Suncor well that occurred days after one of Ludwig's grandchildren was delivered stillborn. In April 2000 he was sentenced to 28 months in jail. He was convicted of five offenses, including blowing up one well, vandalizing another by pouring concrete into it, and counseling an undercover police officer to buy dynamite. In October 2000 he attempted to run for the leadership of the Alberta Social Credit Party, but was forced to withdraw from the leadership contest after a judge refused to waive the conditions of his bail. He served time at a minimum security prison in Grande Cache, and was eventually released after only 19 months. He maintained his innocence after being released.

After being released from prison Ludwig largely faded from media attention. In 2002 journalist Andrew Nikiforuk wrote a book on Ludwig, Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig's War Against Big Oil. In 2003 a made-for-TV movie was produced, Burn: The Robert Wraight Story, which was based on the life of an informant who had cooperated with the RCMP to provide evidence supporting Ludwig's conviction.