Alaska News

Wiebo Ludwig, convicted oil and gas bomber, dies at 70

According to CBC News, environmental activist and convicted oil and gas well bomber Wiebo Ludwig has succumbed to the esophageal cancer he declined treatment for. He was 70 years old.

Because of his rather extreme efforts to fight petroleum companies in the area surrounding his farm near the northern British Columbia-Alberta border, Ludwig became somewhat infamous and a little something of a folk hero.

In 2001, he was released from prison after serving two-thirds of a 28-month sentence for bombing and vandalizing several oil and gas wells.

In 2010, he was again investigated for a string of bombings and anonymous threats against natural gas pipelines and wellheads in B.C.

Hundreds of RCMP officials arrested him and searched his property in 2011. Ludwig spent a night in jail, but he was never charged.

Terrorist or rightful defender, his legacy will remain mixed.

Read a short timeline of Ludwig's life, here; read more about his final days, here; and read an ongoing list of Calgary Herald reader comments about how he may be remembered, here.

Craig Medred

Craig Medred is a former writer for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch and Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2015.

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