All posts by Rafe Mair

About Rafe Mair

Rafe Mair, LL.B, LL.D (Hon) a B.C. MLA 1975 to 1981, was Minister of Environment from late 1978 through 1979. In 1981 he left politics for Talk Radio becoming recognized as one of B.C.'s pre-eminent journalists. An avid fly fisherman, he took a special interest in Atlantic salmon farms and private power projects as environmental calamities and became a powerful voice in opposition to them. Rafe is the co-founder of The Common Sense Canadian and writes a regular blog at rafeonline.com.

Mainstream media ignoring real story on BC Hydro debt, skyrocketing power bills

Economics, Hydropower, Media, WATER
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Mainstream Media Ignoring Real Story on BC Hydro Debt, Skyrocketing Power Bills
Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer

I find myself in complete empathy with H.L. Mencken, when he said “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”

I read Vaughn Palmer in Friday’s Sun, where he said, talking about the challenges facing Bill Bennett (not the real one but the one now in charge of BC Hydro), saying his mandate is “to minimize rate increases to consumers.” Palmer counters, “Yet Hydro needs to manage soaring debt, rising costs and billions of dollars worth of spending in unresolved deferral accounts. Plus it is being pressured to deliver gobs of clean, cheap power for an expanded liquefied natural gas industry.”

Vaughn – where the hell have you been?

I’ve defended the pussycat approach you and your colleague Mike Smyth have taken towards this government for some years, saying that, unlike me, you have mortgages and education fees for your children that I don’t have thus I shouldn’t criticize the ongoing corporate blowjobs you have given and continue to give the Campbell/Clark government. No more.

BC Hydro is in a terrible way, as are we, its shareholders. And many, starting with Dr. John Calvert of SFU and other academics along with environmentalists like Tom Rankin, Damien Gillis and me – and most notably economist Erik Andersen – have been saying as loudly as our limited public outlets will permit that the Campbell/Clark government has forced BC Hydro into making deals with private companies for energy they don’t need yet must take at a cost at least double the market price and up to ten times what they can produce it for themselves. AND, these contracts are now in the range of $50-60 BILLION.

Where the hell have you and the government sucks that employ you been on this issue? A little one-liner in your column implying that this is something surprising that perhaps we should investigate. Golly, gee whiz, look what I found Mommy – a suspicious looking expenditure by BC Hydro that maybe, just maybe we should have a look at!

The scandal is not just the government and the private companies that just financed their re-election – not just the woefully inept Opposition Party – but YOU! Yes, Vaughn, you and those who employ you bear ultimate responsibility for covering this up, going back to the beginning of the Campbell/Clark government that connived to create these secret pay-offs.

I, personally, bear some of that responsibility, for it wasn’t until 2005 that I started questioning this energy policy. I interviewed David Austin, the lawyer for the Independent Power Producers for several years and never questioned closely these secret deals. I admit that and I’m ashamed of it. But I did start to ask questions, penetrating questions and, hearing no honest answers, persisted.

I repeat, Vaughn, where the hell have you and the mainstream media been? How can you now just slough the matter off with sort of a dreamy observation that BC Hydro has some bills to pay?

BC Hydro is broke, Bust. Bankrupt. At least it certainly would be were it in the private sector. Its only salvation is that it can raise its rates to the long-suffering ratepayers.

Now, in the June 15 Weekend Sun, Scott Simpson and Derrick Penner do an interview with Rich Coleman, who is in charge of getting Liquefied Natural Gas rolling. Good Grief! Can’t anyone ask a question? A real question? One slow pitch after another!

Of course the Liberals are to blame as are the NDP for being a pitiful example of what an Opposition is supposed to look like, both in the Legislature and on the hustings.

But the mainstream media and their neutered columnists are as much to blame as is the lily-livered Opposition. You have never even questioned this so-called “run of river”, private power policy, just as you have never questioned salmon farms, pipelines and tankers. You have let it happen and thus it happened. Now, it would seem, you will give Coleman and company free rein as they try with LNG to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear – and fail.

All of you should at least admit it, late in the day though it is, and start telling the people the truth and force the government to do the same.

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Rafe: Site C Dam, LNG a Bad Deal for British Columbians

Hydropower, WATER
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I want to clarify my position on the proposed Site C Dam: I AM AGAINST IT.

One of the troubles in this business is that one comments on many aspects of the environment and can have a word or two or a line taken out of context – as happened with a column of mine last week, in which I referred to newly elected Premier Clark’s resolve to push forward with the dam to power shale gas operations.

Here are my thoughts on Site C.

We do not need the power, nor will we in the foreseeable future. In a blog sometime many years back, I answered the question, “Isn’t Site C better than so-called ‘run-of-river’ projects?” My answer was  if that’s the choice we face, I suppose I would have to agree. Except it’s false premise, since we don’t need either. That was, I believe, about 2008.

Now I would leave no doubt. These are two separate issues. I am unalterably opposed to so-called “run-of-river” because they not only destroy our precious rivers, they are – if they haven’t already –bankrupting BC Hydro.

Let’s then look at Site C. They say this will cost $8 billion – using the usual margin of error on such matters, we can safely assume it will be at least 25% higher, say $10 billion.

At any price the project would wipe out a large and very important amount of farmland and wildlife habitat.

Premier Clark has already designated the power for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) – which is enormously energy intensive – and it is here we descend into the world of madness. Premier Clark says that LNG will eliminate our debt of $57 Billion. Well, for starters, the real number is $171 Billion, or $40,000 per man, woman and child!

This will also give us a “Prosperity Fund” of over $100 Billion.

Really???

At this point we have no firm customers for one cubic meter of LNG and none on the horizon! Of course companies will say they are going to recover all this natural gas, ship it to Prince Rupert and sell it to China and Japan. I repeat – there isn’t a single firm contract in place and my bet is there never will be.

We’re in an entirely new world from a few years ago. A process called “fracking” lets one drill vertically into shale rock up to a kilometre or more then horizontally to capture fossil fuels trapped between the layers of shale. They do this with huge quantities of water laced with chemicals.

Leaving aside, for the moment, the question of markets and refineries, I’m sure you’ve picked up a couple of important environmental questions. What does this process do to the fragility of the nearby landscape?

Does it provoke earthquakes?

And, what about the water? It takes huge amounts – where does it come from and where, after it’s become so toxic, does it go?

The fracking and LNG processes use large quantities of power – this is where Site C comes in. We would sacrifice all that land in order to make power to be sold at bargain rates to gas companies. We, the people of BC, would make power, sell it at a discount to a company that would use that power to make more energy, to which more energy would be applied so as to transfer it to an LNG plant in Prince Rupert, where energy would be used again to make more energy to be shipped and sold!

Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.

Now let’s look at the markets.

The world is awash in natural gas. While fracking isn’t new, it’s come into vogue over the past few years. No one yet knows how much is available but there are huge deposits in Asia, especially Russia and China. Premier Clark would have us use public money to gamble on BC gas being lapped up in Asia, when, all signs say, they have ample of their own and the higher prices they currently pay are likely to vanish by the time we get our gas to market.

Don’t take my word for it – this is according to top business publications like Bloomberg, which wrote in January, “The difference between U.S. and Asian gas is poised to drop by more than 60 percent by 2020, leaving exporters facing a loss of as much as $6 million per tanker, according to calculations by Bloomberg based on data from Rice University in Houston.”

Moreover, if Asia does need gas, Australia is already in the position to supply it. In fact, the immense amounts of public money spent on this is a huge scandal in Australia which, it seems, Premier Clark wants us to join.

Let there be no doubt – I and my colleagues at the Common Sense Canadian stand firmly against Site C, no matter what those who would ravage our environment, including the governments, would have us believe.

To Site C, the answer is NO.

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Rafe: What the Heck are John Horgan and the NDP Thinking?!

Politics, Western Canada
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Ok, John Horgan (BC NDP Energy critic), now I’m pissed off. You were quoted in the Vancouver Sun this week as saying you’re unhappy that the NDP lost, etc, weep, sob.

Here it is in plain, unadorned English: I TOLD YOU SO! In fact, my advice to you and your party has been constant and goes back to Bob Skelly’s day. The fact is that politics is a blood sport – not just in BC but everywhere and in politics as in baseball. Lou Durocher was right – “nice guys finish last”.

Who the hell made the decision to ignore the Liberals’ appalling record? Defeated candidate Harry Lali, when I spoke to him weeks before the election, agreed with me that the election policy of the NDP was calculated to lose.

Who ran this show? Moe Sihota? Was perpetual loser Gerry Scott back? Or was it former Liberal Government chief of staff/Enbidge lobbyist/bottom pincher Ken Boessenkool?

Yes, I’m going to be a bit self-centred today, but I’m entitled. Who established the nice guy, new petty policy-a-day technique? I called it, with indelicacy but truth, a fart a day. Meanwhile, your opponent stuck to one simple, effective narrative.

Now, Mr. Horgan, to the meat of the matter. Those British Columbians uncommitted to either party were, like me and the Common Sense Canadian, not pulling for you because we love the NDP. For the most part, we didn’t give a rat’s ass for any of the parties. We wanted to save our province from the ravages of large industry, bound and determined to ignore out environment.

Where were you – yes, John, you especially? Where were you on fish farms? Where were you on pipelines? Oil tankers? What of private power?

Let’s deal with the latter for a moment. You know what has happened and continues to happen to our rivers as Independent Power Producers (IPPs) dam them, dry them up as fish try to spawn, then sell their electricity to BC Hydro at double or more the market price. You knew better than most that BC Hydro is technically bankrupt, only alive because it can raise our rates.

Ponder that Mr. Horgan – the jewel in BC’s tiara tossed away, and you and your party virtually leave the issue alone!

Coming out against Kinder Morgan didn’t kill you – it was the timing and manner of Mr. Dix’s announcement that did the damage.

Your position on “fracking” and creation therefrom of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) was bewildering to say the least. The environmental movement around the world and most scientists in this field are urging, “Go slow! Let’s get answers to some very serious concerns before we hurl ourselves into this free-for-all”.

On the economic side of LNG, where is the market going to be? China, which has enough natural gas to last 500 years? The US that’s awash with the stuff? What about our competition – Australia, Poland, Russia, which has the biggest gas reserves in the world?

According to the Premier, the $8 BILLION+ going into Site “C” would be used to supply the LNG industry. And you support that?

In fact, what you and the opposition did, by inference at least, is support Premier Clark’s absurd notion that by 2017 LNG will have us debt free, with $100 Billion or so in a “Prosperity Fund”.

The real point is the NDP spat out issues as if they were of equal importance. As I say, sir, a fart a day.

What you did was let down British Columbians who couldn’t care less about political parties but looked to you to save us from the corporate bulldozer.

In fact, the NDP abandoned the position that oppositions traditionally occupy in a democracy. “The duty”, said Lord Randolph Churchill, “of the opposition is to oppose”. This is the only way full knowledge of issues can be attained. Part of that job is to be a government in waiting – in fact you weren’t even an opposition in waiting.

If it weren’t for this terrible “first past the post” system we have, the alternative government would be the Green Party. They alone of the opposition parties hit the issues.

You owe the people of British Columbia, of all political stripes, a huge apology for a gutless election where the government got a free ride.

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Rafe: Take Clark’s disingenuous Enbridge ‘No’ with a pound of salt

Energy and Resources, Pipelines and Supertankers
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BC Premier Christy Clark and Environment Minister Terry Lake (Reuters/Ben Nelms).
BC Premier Christy Clark and Environment Minister Terry Lake (Reuters/Ben Nelms).

Here are three things to remember about Premier Clark and the Enbridge pipeline:

1. She did not reject the pipeline – she simply said that Enbridge had not met BC’s conditions.

2. She has, simply said “we want money”, which reminds me of the old chestnut where a man invites a lady to bed offering her $25,000 dollars. With much hemming and hawing she accepts. He then offers her $25 dollars instead and she shrieks, “Do you think I’m a common whore”. He replies “we’ve already established that madam…now we’re dickering about the price”. That’s what the premier has done.

3. She hasn’t asked the main question – nor has anyone else including the media. That is, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary you can clean up a leak, assuming you can, how do you expect to get crews and heavy machinery into the Rocky Mountains, Rocky Mountain Trench, Coast Range or Great Bear Rainforest?

For all the crap we’re going to hear in the next year or so, these questions will not be dealt with, simply because they can’t be.

The Enbridge spill into the Kalamazoo River nearly 3 years ago demonstrates that even when access is easy, these spills are essentially forever, yet we will be smothered by company claims of “world class cleanup” processes, new-style pipelines and so on. This is the oldest gimmick of all –  if you cannot answer the question, change the question to one you can.

We who raise these issues will be said to be against all development, etc., and even the NDP will start its slow but steady reversal of attitude.

Let me predict another couple of things for you.

Site “C” will go ahead, the price will move to $10 billion and the energy will be sold at much reduced rates to gas “frackers” so they can use publicly supplied energy to extract and send shale gas to Prince Rupert and Kitimat to be converted (more energy used again) to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and shipped to foreign markets (using yet more energy) to enrich large corporations at our expense.

There will be no great energy bonanza to the government from this and Santa Claus must be your faithful pen pal to believe that there will be a“Prosperity Fund” with over $100 Billion in it to make us debt-free and actually rolling in dough.

The biggest problem facing Premier Clark is how to get rid of BC Hydro to the private sector, mostly because of the disastrous private river power policy of the Campbell/Clark government. This issue, to their eternal shame, wasn’t even mentioned by the NDP in the last election. In fact, even those who wouldn’t vote NDP under any circumstances should be appalled at the Official Opposition’s dereliction in its duty to oppose this program, because most of them want BC Hydro saved – if it can be.

We’re in for four years of a government in a deep hole because of their terrible misgovernment, faced by an opposition that disgraced themselves and simply won’t be taken seriously no matter whom they select as leader.

The only thing we can hope for is an incensed public which is prepared to turn to massive civil disobedience.

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Rafe: With NDP Loss, It’s Up to First Nations and Public to Protect Environment

First Nations, Politics, Western Canada
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First Nations and BC citizens march together against Enbridge in Prince Rupert in 2012.
First Nations and BC citizens march together against Enbridge in Prince Rupert in 2012.

I think most environmentalists are still in a state of shock over the Liberals’ victory – or more correctly, the NDP loss.

The NDP campaign was the worst I have ever seen, and that’s saying something! I thought 2009 was bad but it wasn’t a patch on this one.

There’s no point in trawling over the ashes – suffice it to say that Ipublicly advised Adrian Dix, about half way through that politics in BC was a blood sport and that he was in danger of losing.

It didn’t take the Vancouver Sun long to get back into the swing of things with a four-page corporate blow job getting every point of view save those opposed to pipelines and tanker traffic. All the faces of unrestrained capitalism were there, including the great floor crosser himself, David Emerson. The environmentalist’s position was confined to a couple of quotes – I can assure you that neither Damien nor I was questioned.

The evidence from Environment Canada and the US government confirm that spills on land and at sea are certain thus the question is not “if” but when.

A great portion of quotes from industry tallied about their improved cleanup techniques, making one wonder if the prospects for spills were so slim, why bother about clean-up preparations?

There are consistently two obvious questions always avoided – first, if you can clean up spills, what happened to Enbridge and its Kalamazoo spill, now nearly 3 years past?

Perhaps more obvious and important is the question: if your spill occurs anywhere along the Enbridge Gateway project, how are you going to get men and machinery to it?

We’re talking here about the Rockies, the Rocky Mountain trench, the Coast Range and the Great Bear Rainforest. If Enbridge couldn’t control or clean up the Kalamazoo spill – easily accessible – how do they deal with a spill where no one can get at it?

And if Christy Clark does defy her lack of credibility on the issue and follow through on recent bold statements against Enbridge, what of the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline tripling she’s now turning to? Or David Black’s proposed refinery in Kitimat, which she has also supported? These projects present many of the same problems, as I have often noted in these pages.

A battle has been lost, although considering Adrian Dix’s waffling on environmental matters generally, perhaps the NDP would have been no better than the Liberals.

It’s up to First Nations and the rest of us to go to work to stop the destruction of what we love so dearly and we must be ready for civil disobedience. If we’re not prepared to do that, it’s like going into a poker game saying, “remember, I’m always bluffing.”

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Rafe Remembers Elijah Harper, Constitutional Stand-off

Uncategorized
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In a way I share an experience with the late Elijah Harper, who nixed the Meech Lake Accord. I have been airbrushed out of CKNW’s history – Rafe Who? – while the late Mr. Harper is a national non-event thanks to the Central Canadian Establishment.

The background to Meech is pretty straightforward. Brian Mulroney needed political help in Quebec and persuaded all the premiers to support a set of constitutional reforms – labelled the Meech Lake Accord –  whereby all the other premiers would postpone their constitutional ambitions until Quebec was settled nicely away with its “Distinct Society” designation AND a veto over all future constitutional proposals. If you’ve advanced past Politics 101 you will see that once satisfied, Quebec could and would veto other changes such as Senate reform. It was a colossal mistake and one can only assume it was contracted on the back of an envelope during the cocktail hour.

It was agreed that every province had to ratify it by June 1990.

With a few hours to go, Manitoba Premier Gary Filmon moved that the Meech Lake Accord be debated and asked special leave, which was needed, to bring it forward. One has to ask why Filmon waited til the bitter end. The special leave was refused by Elijah Harper, who passed away last week, and Meech Lake was dead.

The Newfoundland and Labrador agreement was given under Tory Brian Peckford but rescinded by the Liberal government of Clyde Wells who had scheduled its vote to follow that of Manitoba. When Manitoba failed to ratify, Premier Wells canceled the Newfoundland and Labrador vote.

Mulroney was livid. He didn’t want to dump on fellow Tory Filmon and to criticize an Indian, as Harper was, was unthinkable. He therefore railed at Clyde Wells, whose decision to withdraw the motion was based on the very sensible view that he shouldn’t divide his province after the deal had failed in Manitoba.

The Meech Lake Accord failed and to many like me it was time to thank God for his blessing.

Mulroney tried again with the Charlottetown Accord but by that time Quebec and BC stated that they would hold referenda.

It failed – spectacularly. I did my best, from behind my microphone at CKNW, to help it go down in BC.

Charlottetown quickly became a non-event.

Mulroney’s press secretary, Bill Fox, wrote a book on the Mulroney years in which there was one sentence about Meech and not a peep about Charlottetown!

Thus, the way the people in charge deal with their losses!

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Rafe: Clark Will Break Up BC Hydro

Privatization
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Over the years I have done blogs, editorials and the like unto the thousands.

This is the all time shortest.

Within the next four years, BC Hydro, once as good a power utility as there  was in the world, will be broken up.

It is, you see, presently bankrupt by private corporation standards, and only keeps, barely, afloat because it can and does go to us the taxpayers and consumers for more money.

This will end because the taxpayers/ratepayers will be tapped out.

Just what form the break-up takes, we’ll have to wait and see, but as sure as God made little green apples, she’s a goner.

Here is the crunch: Mike Harcourt will not be to blame and nor will Glen Clark, Dan Miller and Ujjal Dosanjh. Nor will it be because of some unforeseen world market.

This catastrophe belongs to Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark alone. They forced BC Hydro into making huge “sweetheart” deals with private producers to whom they now owe some $50-60 BILLION; the entire sordid affair happened on their watch with their blessing.

Christy Clark and the Liberals, on May 14, 2013, inherited their own tailor made dunghill, the only challenge being to clean it up without accepting responsibility. And with economists like our own, the truth will emerge every inch of the way.

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Rafe: Dix Let Liberals Get Away with Murder

Politics, Western Canada
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Christy Clark has pulled off the sort of miracle the Boston Bruins managed when coming back from a 4-1 deficit to the Leafs recently. One would be ungracious not to extend congratulations.

The story is more than a matter of manners, for the truth is that Adrian Dix blew the election – big time.

I warned the NDP over and over about how their campaign was letting the Liberals get back into the fight after the NDP had a 20 point advantage in the private polls.

With over two weeks to go in the election, I wrote in thetyee.ca and on this website:

It surprises me that Adrian Dix is playing softball with these issues. This is looking like ’09 all over again.

Mr. Dix, your position on the Kinder Morgan tanker port proposal was nice but marred by the delay. I told you many months ago that if you were opposed to Enbridge that logic should make you opposed to Kinder Morgan as the issues are the same.

Your position favouring LNG plants is puzzling, if only because you seem to be following Clark’s pied piper’s seductive path to supporting a dream that is almost certain never to come true.

To you, Mr. Dix, there is no way this government can win on its merits – you have to give it to them and you seem to be trying your best to do just this. What is truly troublesome is your amiable Adrian approach, with an endless stream of small policy announcements – sort of a fart a day.

I realize that people tell you that they want a politer politics in B.C. That’s what Bob Skelly tried in the ’80s and you know what happened to him.

Politics is a blood sport and your nicely, nicely approach is letting Premier Clark get away with murder. Despite a fivefold increase in the provincial debt, she’s painting you as wastrels and her government as careful money managers!

Your best issue, the appalling fiscal policy of the Campbell/Clark government, is being used as a positive thing for them and you are responding rather than attacking. We’re seeing a tactic similar to when agents acting for George W. Bush, a draft dodger, denigrated the much-decorated John Kerry’s war record so that he could lay claim to being strong on national defence. You’re becoming the essence of John Kerry, reacting weakly on issues that should have you on the attack!

On environmental issues you seem to be passive and non-threatening! These issues, along with the dismal Liberal record on money matters, ought to have you leading firmly, not cowering behind a cloud of good manners.

Mr. Dix, it’s yours to win and to quote the Baseball manager Lou Durocher: “Nice guys finish last.”

About 30 % of BC voters could not ever vote NDP. Never! And about 30% of voters are hard core NDPers and won’t budge. Overall, the balance must be persuaded to be part of one side or the other in the election being fought. To achieve this, the appeal must be led by a tough, well-informed leader who hits hardest and captures enough of the “swing” votes to win. That job is not for Goody Two Shoes.

The NDP are lousy campaigners. They should know that they really have only won one election – 1996 when Glen Clark, carrying the Raiwind-BC Hydro scandal, fought hard, out-campaigned Gordon Campbell and won in the trenches. The Barrett and Harcourt victories were as a result of the Socreds crashing. In 1996, the NDP had in the person of Glen Clark a leader who found the core issues and hammered them home.

How come the huge Campbell/Clark debt – 5 times higher than that left by the NDP – was not an issue?

Same with the scandalous private power scheme that has sent BC Hydro into virtual bankruptcy?

Same re: the pipelines and tanker issue?

How come Clark was able to portray the message that the Liberals, for God’s sake, were more to be trusted with fiscal issues than the NDP?

Where was the BC Rail fiasco?

By 9:30 on election night, champagne corks were popping in the corporations’ meeting rooms. The fish farmers won, big time! So did the pipeline/tanker gang.

If your eyes are young and steady you maybe able to see a faint, distant star. The Green Party elected a man who will bring a voice, if faint, for the environment. Vicki Huntington, a gallant fighter, will be there. So will be a man with good environmental genes and experience – George Heyman, who will likely be the next NDP leader. (You read it here first!)

I’m truly sad to say that the industrial/government coalition brings clearly into focus civil disobedience.

In the shorter term the environmentalists must gird up their loins, get back on their chargers and fight the bastards any way we can.

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Dix Fails to Call Clark on ‘Debt Free BC’ Whopper

Economics, Energy and Resources, LNG, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, Western Canada
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On the side of the Christy Clark bus are the words “Debt Free BC”.

This could mean one of two things – we are now debt free or we will be. Either way, this statement stands as the all-time whopper in BC history and that covers a hell of a lot of territory.

I do not rely on politically-oriented think tanks for my information, rather noted independent economist Erik Andersen. If you add the $70 Billion in direct debt projected in Clark’s latest Budget to secret “taxpayer obligations” relating to private power contracts and public-private partnership (P3) infrastructure deals, you get – wait for it – over $170 BILLION, that’s with a “B”.

What is important to know about the debt is that in 2001, when the Liberals took over, every man, woman and child owed a shade over $8,000. Today we each owe $40,000 – five times what we owed before this so-called business-oriented, fiscally careful bunch of cheats and hypocrites took over.

No matter how you crunch the numbers, the NDP governments in their decade look like misers and skinflints next to this bunch.

Assuming that Premier Clark is referring to her “Prosperity Fund”, this is pie in the sky and cow pie at that.

[signoff1]

You may remember that the Premier first announced this as imminent. Now it is after the 2017 election! It might be added that by then, BC will be in even deeper financial trouble than today.

There is little, if any, certainty that the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) will ever come on stream. There must be markets for it offshore, since the domestic market is flooded in natural gas from “fracking”. To give you a bit o f a feel for this, only a few months ago, the industry and government flacks were talking about the huge Asian need for our gas in LNG form, then recently learned that our biggest potential customer, China, was sitting on some of the world’s biggest unconventional gas reserves. Russia has the largest supply of gas in the world.

The plain truth of the matter is that a large scale LNG industry in BC is speculative at best.

Let’s look at a couple of natal difficulties faced by companies.

A long-term market demand such as would justify LNG from BC just isn’t likely to be there in four years’ time.

Secondly, the LNG industry faces huge environmental hurdles. Two major questions in that regard are:

  1. Where will the massive amount of water needed come from? We simply don’t have “free water” available.
  2. After this water is laced with highly toxic chemicals, where will if go? Into the water table?

These two matters only touch some of the environmental issues – which include the climate impacts of all the greenhouse gases associated with this industry.

The underpinning of the industry is hundreds of millions of dollars in pipelines and port facilities. Premier Clark wants voters to brush aside these and many collateral concerns, thus convince voters that in four or five years all these issues will be resolved, including air-tight contracts with Asian customers to take this LNG. (It should be added that if, say, China, signs such a contract, the minute they no longer need our product they will vanish into the atmosphere.).

[signoff3]

It surprises me that Adrian Dix is playing softball with these issues. This is looking like ’09 all over again.

Mr. Dix, your position on the Kinder Morgan tanker port proposal was nice but marred by the delay. I told you many months ago that if you were opposed to Enbridge that logic should make you opposed to Kinder Morgan as the issues are the same.

Your position favouring LNG plants is puzzling, if only because you seem to be following Clark’s pied piper’s seductive path to supporting a dream that is almost certain never to come true.

To you, Mr. Dix, there is no way this government can win on its merits – you have to give it to them and you seem to be trying your best to do just this. What is truly troublesome is your amiable Adrian approach, with an endless stream of small policy announcements – sort of a fart a day.

I realize that people tell you that they want a politer politics in BC. That’s what Bob Skelly tried in the 80s and you know what happened to him.

Politics is a blood sport and your nicely, nicely approach is letting Premier Clark get away with murder. Despite a fivefold increase in the provincial debt, she’s painting you as wastrels and her government as  careful money managers!

Your best issue, the appalling fiscal policy of the Campbell/Clark government, is being used as a positive thing for them and you are responding rather than attacking. We’re seeing a tactic similar to when agents acting for George W. Bush, a draft dodger, denigrated the much-decorated John Kerry’s war record so they could lay claim to being strong on national defence. You’re becoming the essence of John Kerry, reacting weakly on issues that should have you on the attack!

On environmental issues you seem to be passive and non-threatening! These issues, along with the dismal Liberal record on money matters, ought to have you leading firmly, not cowering behind a cloud of good manners.

Mr. Dix, it’s yours to win and to quote the Baseball manager Lou Durocher, “nice guys finish last”.

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Enbridge Review Panel’s Skimpy Insurance Requirements Fail to Reassure Public

Economics, Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers
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The news out of the Joint Review Panel looking into the Enbridge pipeline should have a profound effect on us all.

One of the conditions is a requirement that Enbridge carry close to $1 billion in insurance, plus $100 million on hand to cover losses from spills.

I find this interesting, since normally an assessment of future damages covered is accompanied by an assessment of the risk to be covered. What is the size of the risk and how big a part of that risk will be taken? This so in every kind of insurance – be it life, casualty, automobile, what have you. This means not only must there be an assessment of the risk – i.e. is there likely to be a loss – but how much is a loss going to cost? This is especially true of casualty insurance, as the Joint Review Panel is dealing with here.

The second critical point is whether or not the insurer will continue to cover Enbridge after a loss has occurred? Can they cancel, leaving Enbridge’s further damages up to us the people?

This story will be seen (Enbridge hopes) as an encouraging sign, because opponents will be shut up now that these big numbers are involved.

I am not impressed – indeed quite the opposite – for this indicates that the Joint Panel thinks that there’s a risk involved. There is in fact acertainty. Dealing with this as simply “a risk” and announcing the coverage required is asking us to accept that “risk” because the damages are prepaid. Moreover, the amount of insurance involved is nowhere near what the ultimate cost will be and ignores the question: what will the long range cost to our environment be and how do you comopute that loss?

If one uses, as an example, the Enbridge spill into the Kalamazoo River, two years later they had used up all of their insurance of $650 million. The cleanup continues and the cost is expected to be over a billion dollars and much of the damage is forever.

Enbridge will be required to demonstrate insurance coverage at $950 billion – roughly equivalent cost of the Kalamazoo spill. BUT, the Kalamazoo spill was easily accessed. There were no mountain ranges like the Rockies or the Coast Range; no Rocky Mountain Trench; no Great Bear Rainforest to contend with. Let us, for God’s sake, ask a key question: How does Enbridge have access to spills on land? How does it get labour and heavy equipment to the spill? Doesn’t the Kalamazoo spill demonstrate that there can never be a total cleanup?

The BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has cost, so far, about $36 billion and rising.

Another critical question is who insures oil tankers, especially when many of them will be owned by companies flying a flag of convenience like Panama, the Cayman Islands and the like?

How is a coastal spill to be cleaned up and at whose cost?

What the people of British Columbia are certainly to have are spills on land and sea for which they will pay much of the cleanup out of their taxes. What we are also certain to have is enormous environmental damage forever.

Finally, the pronouncement of the Joint Review Panel should be assessing the frequency and probability of damage and laying that before the public for a decision as to whether or not these pipelines should be built in the first place.

This won’t be done and the Harper government is on record giving its approval of these pipelines no matter what the National Energy Board recommends.

Given the Kalamazoo experience, how does Enbridge control and clean up a spill when the only access is by helicopter? Every way one looks at this case shows huge costs – much paid by the public – with permanent damage to our environment.

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