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Bombings spark tips

Police are hoping a new spate of tips will help them crack what appears to be the longest string of bombings since the FLQ terrorized Quebec in the 1960s.

Police are hoping a new spate of tips will help them crack what appears to be the longest string of bombings since the FLQ terrorized Quebec in the 1960s.

After two bombs exploded on EnCana’s northeast B.C. natural gas pipeline network within three days of each other last week, the RCMP issued a renewed call for the public’s help in pinpointing the person responsible.

“Our phones were ringing today,” Cpl. Dan Moskaluk said Monday. “We got over a dozen tips since these last two incidents.”

“There’s a public consensus that people are looking at it and saying hang on a second, maybe I have seen something. I think our messaging was appropriate and effective because obviously we’re getting calls.”

EnCana (TSX:ECA) facilities have been bombed six times since last October, after the company and a small Dawson Creek, B.C., newspaper received a crudely printed warning that EnCana and other oil and gas companies should cease operations in the area.

“We will not negotiate with terrorists, which you are because you keep endangering our families with crazy expansion of deadly gas wells in our home lands,” the letter said, referring to the regions sour gas reserves, which contain potentially deadly hydrogen sulphide.

The six blasts have caused several leaks but so far no one has been hurt.

Author Andrew Nikiforuk said the bombing campaign — and police and government reaction to it — bear striking similarities to what happened in Alberta a decade ago, when farmer Wiebo Ludwig was jailed for two years for bombings and vandalism aimed at sour gas producers.

Two EnCana gas wells and one owned by Suncor Inc. were hit in 1998, and another blast cratered a road leading to a Norcen Energy well site.