Category Archives: LNG

BC LNG: Boon or Boondoggle? LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) is one of biggest energy stories to hit Western Canada. It is promoted as a clean bridge fuel that will create thousands of jobs and turn British Columbia into a trillion-dollar global energy leader. The idea is to cool natural gas into liquid, so it can be shipped to higher-price markets in Asia. But is it really all it’s cracked up to be? And what are the trade-offs and impacts associated with LNG and the fracked gas that would feed it?

The Common Sense Canadian is your go-to source for in-depth analysis of the potential benefits and risks of this “game-changing” industry.

LNG plant’s comment period extended over missing river

August 21, 2013Energy and Resources, LNG, Pipelines and SupertankersDamien Gillis

LNG plant's comment period extended over missing river controversy — Petronas/Progress Energy’s proposed Lelu Island LNG plant -artist’s rendering

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) announced today that it’s extending the public comment period for a controversial, proposed Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) plant near Prince Rupert. Concerns were raised last week by West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL) over an incorrect map in the project description documents, which made Canada’s second largest salmon river, the Skeena, disappear.

As The Common Sense Canadian reported on Friday, the plant, proposed by Malaysian energy giant Petronas’ Canadian subsidiary, Progress Energy, would be situated amid vital salmon habitat in the Skeena estuary. According to WCEL, that would have been a red flag for many citizens and environmental groups had the project documents accurately reflected this important fact. As a result, the federal agency reviewing the proposal received less feedback than a project of this nature would ordinarily elicit – a point CEAA conceded with its announcement today that public comments will now be accepted until September 20.

Funding applications for groups and individuals to engage with the project’s environmental assessment process will also now be accepted until September 20.

“We are very pleased that CEAA has acknowledged the potential confusion that resulted from this incorrect map,” says WCEL Executive Director Jessica Clogg. “It’s a small piece of good news for the Skeena salmon…Flora Bank, which sits directly adjacent to the proposed project, is critical salmon habitat that was omitted from the original map.”

Clogg’s enthusiasm is tempered, though, by larger concerns which remain around the lack of big-picture review for the whole LNG program, which contains up to 12 different proposals in Kitimat and Prince Rupert.

“The ‘Case of the missing Skeena’ may have been resolved in the short term, but we still have this piecemeal approach to reviewing myriad projects, which makes it harder for people to catch things like a missing river. What we need is a process that takes a strategic look at all of the potential cumulative impacts on the things that British Columbians care about – our salmon, water, air quality and climate.”

The engineering firm that produced the faulty map, Stantec, blamed the mistake on an error that arose from combining incompatible federal and provincial mapping data sets, as senior principle Ward Prystay explained yesterday to Metro News:

“The provincial data sets and the federal data sets in this specific area didn’t compliment each other,” he said, explaining that after using layers that show First Nations communities, provincial parks, roads, railways and tidal lines, the Skeena somehow disappeared.

“…Where there was missing data they actually inserted a blue background on it to be able to get the water to show up looking like blue on the [revised] map.”

According to Karen Fish of CEAA, “The corrected map has also been included retroactively in the original project. Both the original map and the new revised map will be made available on the Agency’s website, along with a notice referring to the revision and the date on which it took place.”

Petronas makes Skeena River disappear in LNG proposal

August 15, 2013Energy and Resources, LNG, Oil&GasDamien Gillis

Malaysian energy giant makes Skeena River disappear in LNG proposal — Petronas/Progress Energy’s proposed LNG plant on Lelu Island, near Prince Rupert, BC (artist’s rendering)

You would think Malaysian energy giant Petronas would have learned a lesson from fellow fossil fuel pipeline and coastal export terminal proponent Enbridge’s “disappearing islands” debacle last year. Enbridge was caught downplaying the risks of its Northern Gateway proposal by making 1,000 square km of islands vanish from the Douglas Channel in a digital animation of its tanker route from Kitimat.

Curiously, Petronas is following in Enbridge’s infamous footsteps with a blatantly inaccurate project description document for its proposed Pacific Northwest LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) terminal near Prince Rupert. The document, submitted earlier this year to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) by Petronas’ newly-bought Canadian subsidiary, Progress Energy, made Canada’s second largest salmon river, the Skeena, disappear.

The inaccurate map was later corrected via a statement on CEAA’s website,but remains within the original project description document. The two maps are shown here, side-by-side.

West Coast Environmental Law, acting on behalf of its client, T. Buck Suzuki Foundation – an intervener in the LNG project’s environmental review – is calling for an extension to the now-closed window for public comment on Petronas’ project description and applications for funding for concerned groups and individuals to engage with future environmental hearings. In an August 14 letter to the federal agency overseeing the review, staff lawyer Andrew Gage wrote:

[quote]Notice is a key requirement of procedural fairness, and an inaccurate map that fails to indicate the proximity of the project to such a key environmentally significant feature fundamentally undermines that requirement…In our view, the Agency has an obligation to invite further public input related to the draft EIS and further opportunity to apply for participant funding.[/quote]

The mighty Skeena River, which flows from the Sacred Headwaters, near the community of Iskut in northwest BC, to the Pacific Ocean near Prince Rupert, is in dire straits these days. Its once-plentiful salmon stocks are in their worst condition in several decades this season, raising concerns about the impact of Petronas’ enormous proposed LNG terminal and associated tanker traffic through vital estuary habitat.

Central to that habitat is the second largest intact eel grass bed in BC, located at Flora Bank, right next to Petronas’ proposed project on Lelu Island. Out-migrating salmon smolts depend on this eel grass sanctuary to adjust to saltwater habitat as they head out to sea.

For this very reason, a proposed coal terminal on a neighbouring island was rejected by federal fisheries officers 40 years ago. A May, 1973 report summarized the likely impacts on key habitat from the smaller project: “Inverness Passage, Flora Bank and De Horsey Bank, in that order, are habitats of critical importance for the rearing of juvenile salmon. The construction of a superport at the Kitson Island-Flora Bank site would destroy much of this critical salmon habitat.”

The potential impact of Petronas’ project on Skeena salmon habitat is compounded by several other massive LNG terminal proposals nearby – including BG Group’s plant on Ridley Island and plans from major Asian and Australian natural gas players.

West Coast Environmental Law’s contention is that groups and individuals who would have otherwise been concerned about impacts of Petronas’ plant on the Skeena River may not have made submissions to the initial call for comments and intervener funding, based on misleading information about the project. “As a result of these inaccurate notices, it may well be that individuals who might be concerned about the Skeena River may have failed to appreciate the Project’s proximity to the river and failed to make comments, or to apply for participant funding, as a result.”

It remains to be seen whether CEAA acknowledges these complaints and determines further opportunity for public engagement is required as a result.

BC will pay high price for Liquefied Natural Gas

July 15, 2013Energy and Resources, Fracking, LNG, Oil&GasRay Grigg

BC will pay high price for Liquefied Natural Gas — BC’s new Minister for Natural Gas, Rich Coleman

By electing a party whose principal economic platform is the development of British Columbia’s natural gas resources, BC voters have decided to tempt disaster. The province’s premier, apparently oblivious to the portentous warnings of climate science, has created a new ministry specifically tasked with the responsibility of developing at least three Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plants by 2020 — the industry envisions an eventual total of six — with the objective of shipping massive quantities of this product to an apparently energy-hungry Asian market.

The strategy is couched in exuberant promise. Billions of dollars in royalties are expected to quickly erase BC’s debt, provide employment for thousands, end homelessness, fund education, solve healthcare problems and create a huge legacy fund. An estimated trillion dollars in additional economic activity over 30 years is supposed to bring unparalleled wealth to the province. In response to environmental concerns, LNG is being pitched as a “climate solution” because burning natural gas is advertised as producing only about half the carbon dioxide of oil. Everyone is supposed to relax, trust that the future will be secure under the guidance of political expedience, and disregard the frenzy of drilling, fracking and pumping.

However, such promise comes with concerns. Global carbon dioxide emissions continue to rocket upward, with no reductions in sight. World consumption of coal is soaring, increasing in almost every country but the United States. Japan, stung by the trauma of the meltdown of its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, is shifting its energy toward coal and gas — its carbon dioxide emissions are up 30 percent. Even Germany, with its idealistic pragmatism on carbon emissions, is building more coal-fired electrical generation stations as it, too, cuts back on nuclear power. Meanwhile, the promise of making coal clean with carbon capture and storage has been mostly ineffectual, both economically and practically. To complete the scenario, huge new supplies of oil are now rushing to market from the innovation of horizontal drilling in shale deposits. The International Energy Agency has measured the daily global consumption of oil at 89.8 million barrels per day for 2012, and expects a rise to 90.6 mbd for 2013. So LNG will be added to the climate-changing effects of unrestrained oil and coal consumption.

With no foreseeable shortages of fossil fuels for decades, and with the prospect of nearly limitless quantities of natural gas inundating the market by pipeline and LNG tankers, economists are predicting a decrease in the dollar value of oil and coal. This will encourage their use, reduce the pressure for efficiency, and undermine the renewable energy option from such sources such as wind, solar, geothermal and tidal — precisely what the global climate crisis does not need.

Assuming that the foundational principles of climate science are correct — as they almost certainly are — then the development of natural gas and LNG in BC is a regressive strategy, a shortsighted and reckless venture in the direction of catastrophe. When burning 1 kg of natural gas produces 2.75 kg of carbon dioxide, advertising LNG as “green” is a political strategy, not an environmental one.

Considerable evidence argues against the environmental benefits of LNG — cleaner than oil and coal is hardly a sterling recommendation for burning another fossil fuel. Extracting reliable quantities of natural gas from sparse concentrations in shale requires nearly constant drilling. Fracking necessitates the injection of toxic chemicals and inordinate amounts of valuable water into sometimes unpredictable strata. Leakage of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, commonly occurs in the process. Pumping adds to emissions. The cooling and compressing to convert natural gas to LNG is extremely energy intensive. Then ocean-going shipping contributes to the inefficiency. By totalling all these expenditures of energy, some critics calculate that LNG is almost as carbon intensive as coal.

Furthermore, the economic benefits for BC are likely overly optimistic. Many countries are presently planning or building LNG plants for export purposes — a dozen in the US and several in Australia. And Russia, with natural gas resources that dwarf the ones in this province, will be piping supplies directly to China. Meanwhile, Asian countries are being careful to diversify their LNG sources, a strategy designed to keep the energy market competitive and prices down.

But the sociological argument against LNG is, perhaps, the most damning and compelling. Societies that come to rely heavily on the export of raw resources invariably stultify their human potential and handicap their future prospects. Their economies become narrow, brittle and unstable, subject to the vagaries of boom-and-bust cycles. Skewed in favour of fast and easy money rather than solid and sustainable enterprise, they relinquish their economic control to the decisions of others. When the source of their wealth is fragile and uncertain, their aspirations invariably overreach their ability to pay and their collective psychology begins to exhibit the personality characteristics of the addict.

Such resource-based societies lose resilience, independence and confidence. So they are inclined to perceive themselves as vulnerable victims rather than confident initiators. As their collective psyche suffers an erosion of power, sophistication, pride and morale, they become cynical, an unhealthy psychology that combines with a frayed social fabric to make their problems progressively more difficult to solve. A sense of defeat and powerlessness even manifests as a declining involvement in participatory democracy.

British Columbians will pay a high price for LNG. But the cost to the global environment will be immeasurably higher. BC owes itself and the world much more than this.

Liberal Lies on LNG, Hydro Debt, Budget Spell Fiscal Disaster for BC

June 29, 2013Economics, Hydropower, LNGRafe Mair

Crown utility BC Hydro has been saddled with massive debt associated with overpriced private power contracts

We are getting barrow after barrow of barnyard droppings dumped on our laps and we should know it.

Premier Clark promised us huge LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) revenues in a few years. We would be debt free and have $100 BILLION in the to be created “Prosperity Fund”. That was at the start of the election campaign. Then it became a year after the next election. Now, according to Mike Smyth of the Province, this is 15 years away.

It’s all bullshit. For LNG to become a major export industry 15 years from now requires a phenomenal outlay of capital and it isn’t going to happen. Of course companies will, cross their hearts and hope to die, promise great things but they will not happen. We have only begun to learn about the reserves of shale gas and oil around the world but, in all likelihood, they will be everywhere and in abundance. Premier Clark and Finance Minister de Jong are telling us not to worry but it will all happen.

Well, then, would the two of you please outline the timetable for all this?

As Mario Cuomo said, “you campaign in poetry and govern in prose.” These promises however, are dangerous and deliberate nonsense.

Within the mandate of this government, it will try to break up BC Hydro and sell off the parts. Just like BC Rail, the government will retain residual ownership, in 900 years, to take back the dams. At the rate we’re going, this will have to happen. BC Hydro is awash in debt in its normal operations and new projects and is now facing an ever-increasing debt as private power producers (IPPs) provide power to BC Hydro at double-plus the market price and 10x what it can generate for itself from heritage assets.

This is the elephant in the room no one will talk seriously about – not the Premier, not the Minister of Finance, certainly not a government MLA, not Vaughn Palmer or Mike Smyth – it just throws its weight around unchecked.

Now BC Hydro is committed to a $10 BILLION Site “C” dam to subsidize the government’s dusty-eyed plans to make us all rich with LNG.

BC Hydro has only one source of revenue – you and me, the taxpayer and ratepayer – and when the government comes clean, the rate increases will be beyond our ability to pay.

This all started with the Gordon Campbell government and my bet is that privatization talks have been ongoing since then.

The balanced budget of Mike de Jong is bullshit too. In the first place, you can hardly say with a straight face that you’ve balanced a budget when, to make ends meet, you’ve sold hard assets for your revenue side. This is precisely like you balancing your personal budget by taking on a new mortgage or selling the car.

The real debt of the province per capita, under the Liberals, has quintupled. It will continue to grow at a frightening rate.

There’s insufficient money for current social funding, let alone increasing it.

This government’s election platform was a tissue of lies, but so what? It kept the bad guys out and left the white hats in control, didn’t it?

The Liberals have a hell of a lot to answer for. So do the NDP, who ran a pitiful campaign.

So do the nearly 50% of voters who stayed home last May 14.

Increasingly Irrelevant NDP Opposition Failed to Question LNG Pipe Dream

June 27, 2013Energy and Resources, LNGRafe Mair

Artist's rendering of one of 5 or more proposed LNG plants for BC's coast. — Artist’s rendering of one of 5 or more proposed LNG plants for BC’s coast.

Gordon Clark in the Province this week called into question the relevance of the NDP and I’d like to add my two bits worth (now there’s an expression that’ll date you!).

Clark is right and it has serious consequences for our province.

As I have often mentioned, Lord Randolph Churchill once said, “it’s the duty of the opposition to oppose.” He did not mean that oppositions must simply sow sand in the gears but they must, if the system is to work, question all government policies or they will be seen as adopting them. The latter may be fine in limited cases but certainly not in contentious ones.

The Clark government has bet its entire stack on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). The NDP, through Energy critic John Horgan, supported LNGduring the recent election. The problem is obvious – “do you support LNG?” is more than just one simple question.

It would be like saying “I like apple pie”. Even if it means you’ll throw up? Even if the apples are stolen? Even if picked by slave labour? Even if the cooking oil is possibly poisonous? What if the crust contains carcinogenic elements?

LNG has to be obtained from somewhere and more and more of that is from shale deposits “mined” by “fracking”. Does that mean that the NDP supports “fracking” to obtain the original gas? (Fracking is a process where one drills deep underground, then horizontally, sometimes to great lengths; then, when finding gas or oil or both trapped in pockets inside layers of shale and using enormous volumes of water laced with chemicals, one cracks open the shale, releasing the oil or gas to the surface.)

This, standing alone, is a huge issue. It takes a lot of water – where does it come from? What happens to it when, chemically-laced, it’s released? What about stability of the land? It’s irresponsible in the extreme to base policy on extraction methods that have not been proved safe.

A proper opposition party would insist “fracking” be environmentally safe before even thinking of an LNG policy.

Fracking for natural gas and liquefying it is expensive, as acknowledged by the premier, and the market is heavily subsidized in other regions – especially Australia, which is a big player. So we, the taxpayers will be called upon to pay subsidies.

The Premier has already designated Site “C” Dam as the engine for powering our LNG (along with burning gas for electricity). Does the NDP agree with subsidizing international industrial giants? Does it agree with Site “C” and the enormous environmental damage it will do? There appears to be no case for Site “C” to supply power for any domestic purpose other than LNG. Does the NDP agree with Site “C” – even if the government can’t provide a proved need?

The gas must be piped a long way. Even though a natural gas pipeline is not as fatal as one carrying bitumen, is it worth the candle to take any risk at all?

What about the risks when converting gas to LNG? The accidents have not been many but when they happen they can be horrendous. Have the NDP and Mr. Horgan assessed these risks?

Leaving aside the environmental concerns for a moment, at this point in time, the market for gas is fragile to say the least. Moreover, the essential ingredient in any deal – supply – is uncertain. To put all our eggs into the LNG basket means we make a commitment which will be hugely expensive without any real idea of what, if any, market will be there.

“Fracking” has upset the world of energy, Big Time. More and more shale fossil fuels are being found almost daily. Anyone trying to predict the market in 5 months’ time, let alone 5 years is a gambling fool.

In short, say that the premier’s optimistic view is correct that we’ll be in business, rolling in dough by 2018, we must commit now to expensive plans, even though by 2018 there may be no viable market for our gas.

Is this what Mr. Horgan and the NDP mean by supporting LNG?

Put another way, are you satisfied that your money is safe with the NDP supporting LNG?

In answering that question, it’s not good enough for the NDP to say, “we just agree in principle but reserve the right to question how the policy is implemented.” In for a penny, in for a pound.

This is what Lord Churchill was talking about and the NDP is the only viable opposition we have.

The NDP has a hell of a lot more to think of than its energy policy. As Mr. Clark has stated, the party has become irrelevant. It still doesn’t know if it’s a movement, an heir of Fabian Socialism or a modern political party that is prepared to offer an alternative that ordinary people can consider as a possible government. I say, there is no in between.

This doesn’t mean that a party shouldn’t have principles – of course they should, but if those principles mean that policy must, like a religious catechism, adhere to ancient tenets, regardless of present day realities, irrelevance is the result.

This isn’t a new problem for the NDP. Those who remember the contest between the moderate Tom Berger and the activist Dave Barrett in the 60s will know that this is an ancient struggle.

Those wise men and women who run the NDP must understand just how bad their May 14 loss was. This province, if I may repeat former utterances, is 30-30-40. 30% will always vote NDP, 30% will vote for a right wing party and 40% are there to be wooed.

The NDP utterly failed to capture that 40%, even though they were facing a government that had been in power too long, was rife with scandals and had made a balls up of the public purse.

It would appear that the NDP will just drift until they get a new leader and, all the while, let the engine of energy policy pass while they stand at the station and wave them on. All the while, farmland will be destroyed, rivers will be ravaged, salmon runs ruined, pipelines will burst while tankers wreak havoc on our shores.

For those of us who had hoped for, indeed expected better government, it is a very bitter pill we must swallow.

Gas pains: BC’s gas plan is a short-sighted pipe dream

May 29, 2013Energy and Resources, Fracking, LNGDr. David Suzuki

B.C. appears to be pinning its economic hopes on natural gas – much of it obtained by fracking. While the world should be turning from fossil fuels to cleaner energy and conservation, we’re poised to dig ourselves deeper into the climate-altering carbon hole.

Taking a cue from the liquidation-sale policies of the Alberta and federal governments, B.C.’s leaders want to get fossil fuels out of the ground, piped to the coast, liquefied and shipped to Asia or wherever they can find buyers, as quickly as possible. It’s a short-sighted plan based on outmoded thinking. In the long run, it’s not good for the economy or the environment.

Whether politicians believe fossil fuel supplies are endless or can only see as far as the next election, they’re selling out our future and leaving a shattered legacy for our kids and grandkids. To start, natural gas is not the clean-energy solution it’s touted to be. According to thePembina Institute, if only five of 12 proposed liquefied natural gas terminals were built on the B.C. coast, they could spew 63-million tonnes of carbon a year into the atmosphere – exceeding the amount now produced by the Alberta tar sands and equal to all of B.C.’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2010. Discharges of particulate matter and volatile organic compounds would also be significant new sources of pollution.

Liquefying the gas for export, which requires enormous amounts of energy, isn’t the only source of greenhouse gases. Leaks – or what the industry refers to as “fugitive emissions” – during drilling, extraction and transport are also concerns. Although the B.C. Environment Ministry claims just .3 to .4 per cent of gas escapes into the atmosphere, independent studies say it’s likely many times that amount.

According to an article in Nature, scientists from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Colorado in Boulder found leaks of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – amounted to between four and nine per cent of total production at two gas fields in the U.S.

Even the economic benefits of the province’s LNG plans are suspect. Many analysts expect price corrections, and U.K. LNG expert Peter Hughes told the CBC the perceived windfall is “wishful thinking” because B.C. will have to compete with producers in places like Qatar, East Africa and Australia. Most of the money wouldn’t even stay in B.C., as many gas companies are from other provinces and countries. As for jobs, natural gas extraction, transport and production create relatively few compared to almost every other economic sector – including tourism, science and technology, health care, education and small business.

On top of that, hydraulic fracturing or fracking – shooting water, sand and chemicals at high pressure into the ground to shatter shale and release natural gas – has many other environmental consequences. It requires massive amounts of water, contaminates drinking water, damages habitat and ecosystems – even causes small earthquakes.

As well as seeing natural gas as an economic panacea, some argue it could be a “bridging fuel” – something cleaner than oil or coal to use while we make the transition to renewable energy. But it’s a hazard-strewn bridge, and subsidizing and investing in natural gas extraction and infrastructure without any real commitment to wean us off oil, coal and gas will only keep us on the fossil fuel road and discourage investment in clean energy and conservation.

The industry also relies on taxpayers’ money to subsidize it, through tax and royalty credits, and to provide water, roads and the massive amounts of energy required to liquefy the gas, perhaps from a new Site C dam on the Peace River. And fugitive emissions from gas operations are exempt from the carbon tax. If we are really “bridging” to reduce fossil fuels, why are we subsidizing companies for their carbon costs?

It’s time to invest our money and human resources in long-term, innovative ideas that will create good, lasting jobs, and ensure that we and our children and grandchildren continue to enjoy healthy and prosperous lives and that our spectacular “supernatural” environment is protected. We have abundant renewable resources and opportunities to conserve energy and lead the way in developing clean energy.

It’s time to move forward.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Communications Manager Ian Hanington.

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

April 26, 2013Economics, Energy and Resources, LNG, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, Western CanadaRafe Mair

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:

Where will the massive amount of water needed come from? We simply don’t have “free water” available.
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”.

WATER + POWER: Upcoming Presentations by Rafe Mair and Damien Gillis

April 19, 2013Energy and Resources, Fracking, Hydropower, LNG, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, WATER, Western CanadaCommon Sense Canadian

In the lead-up to the BC election, Common Sense Canadian co-founders Rafe Mair and Damien Gillis are travelling to four BC communities – Kamloops, Merritt, Williams Lake and Prince George – to discuss key issues shaping the future of our province. The multi-media presentations, titled “WATER + POWER: The Future of BC’s Energy, Environment and Democracy,” will include video clips from filmmaker Gillis, a speech by Mair and an audience Q&A session.

On the agenda is a web of proposed energy projects which represent the vision of both our provincial and federal governments for the economic future of BC – all with profound impacts on our vital freshwater and coastline. The discussion will cover everything from proposed oil and gas pipelines to fracking, Site C Dam, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and private river power projects – to an alternate vision for managing BC’s resources and economy to the benefit of the public and environment.

The non-partisan events will scrutinize the BC Liberals’ economic and environmental record over the past decade, while examining the NDP’s policy positions on issues the like the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion to Vancouver and the nexus of Site C Dam, natural gas “fracking” and the plan to build a massive LNG industry on BC’s coast.

“Our goal is to provide the public with accurate information and connect the dots between interrelated projects of enormous environment, social, cultural, and economic significance,” says Gillis. “We’re furthering a much-needed dialogue about the future of our province at a key moment politically.”

The details for the upcoming events are as follows:

April 23, 7 pm: Kamloops, BC @ Desert Garden Seniors’ Centre (540 Seymour St. – Mojave Room)

April 24, 7 pm: Merritt, BC @ Merritt Civic Centre (1950 Mamette Ave.)

May 8, 7 pm: Williams Lake, BC @ Williams Lake Secondary School (640 Carson Dr.)

May 9, 7 pm: Prince George @ UNBC (stay tuned for room information)

The Kamloops and Williams Lake events are co-hosted by the local Council of Canadians chapters. All events are by donation.

Site C Dam: A $10 Billion Taxpayer Subsidy for LNG, Fracking

April 2, 2013Energy and Resources, Fracking, Hydropower, LNGDamien Gillis

Christy Clark argues the need for Site C Dam to power LNG on Global TV last week (screen capture).

Premier Christy Clark wants BC citizens to subsidize the oil and gas industry with a $10 Billion taxpayer-funded dam. Though she won’t put it quite like that, that’s precisely the implication of the policies she’s promoting in the run-up to May’s provincial election.

Clark confirmed her vision for powering a new, much-ballyhooed Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) Industry to Global TV last week (a must-watch). The premier has promised in recent months a $100 Billion windfall of provincial revenues from the yet-to-be-developed LNG industry, a boast which has drawn justified ridicule from pundits.

LNG requires enormous amounts of energy to super-cool gas in order to liquefy it and load it onto tankers. Numerous global energy companies – including Shell, Chevron, and a number of big Asian players – have lined up over the past year to build LNG plants in Kitimat and Prince Rupert, in order to access Asian markets which are currently paying significantly more for gas than the North American market.

Clark acknowledges the province doesn’t have enough electricity to supply the demands of multiple proposed LNG facilities. Her solution? Flood an 80 km stretch of the fertile Peace Valley in northeast BC to build a new dam. Dubbed Site “C” because it would be the third dam on the Peace River, the project would flood some 20,000 acres of high quality agricultural land and wildlife habitat.

Clark was blunt with Global TV reporter Jas Johal:

[quote]You can’t power up these huge [LNG] facilities without more power, so BC Hydro’s going to have to build Site C – we’re in favour of making that happen.[/quote]

The statement came as the window for public comments to the environmental assessment process for Site C winds down, drawing to a close Thursday, April 4.

Last year, at a press conference in Fort St. John, near the location of the proposed dam, Premier Clark spoke to the need for Site C to power LNG. She acknowledged that just one of the 5 or 6 planned LNG terminals on BC’s coast – a proposal by Shell and its Chinese, Korean and Japanese partners – would eat up the entire 1,100 megawatt output of Site C.

So even with this new dam – which won’t be up and running until 2020 at the earliest – BC has nowhere near the energy required to power the energy-hungry LNG industry. To that end, Premier Clark created a loophole in the Clean Energy Act to allow gas companies to generate power for their plants by burning their own natural gas. Which begs the question: why the continued need for Site C?

Perhaps it’s because the power from Site C would be offered to gas producers at a steep discount, which is the standard for large industrial users, who typically pay less than half what residential and small business customers pay for hydroelectricity in BC.

When pressed by Johal on the taxpayer subsidy issue, Clark brushed it off – “That’s not part of what we’re negotiating…We aren’t going to ask residential taxpayers to subsidize this.”

And yet, the dam itself, pegged at $8 Billion but sure to balloon beyond that (a study of 70 large dam projects funded by the World Bank found that the average overrun was a whopping 27%), will be on the shoulders of taxpayers and crown corporation BC Hydro – already drowing in massive debt. And unless the plan is to make the LNG industry pay top dollar for this new power (which defeats the purpose entirely), then residential hydro customers will bear the full burden through much steeper power bills.

While Site C is a looming taxpayer boondoggle, it will also destroy precious farmland at a time when we produce just 40% of our own food in BC. And as this recent report from the David Suzuki Foundation shows, it will compound the enormous industrial footprint that has marred over 65% of the Peace Valley over the past half century – making it easily one of the world’s most heavily impacted regions already.

A major source of those impacts is the natural gas industry, which relies more and more on environmentally risky “fracking” to extract the gas that would flow to these LNG plants through multiple new pipelines.

So Site C and LNG mean a major ramping up of increasingly controversial fracking.

Clark’s opposition in the upcoming provincial election on May 14, the BC NDP, are showing signs of backing away from Site C. The party’s Energy Critic John Horgan told the Vancouver Sun in February, “I’m confident that in the first two years of an NDP government we won’t be building Site C.”

For more information on Site C and tools to help you submit your comments to the environmental assessment process by the April 4 deadline, click here.

BC’s Fossil Fuel Folly

March 23, 2013Energy and Resources, Fracking, LNG, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and SupertankersRay Grigg

Perhaps the big white banner with black letters at the recent American protest of the Keystone XL pipeline summarizes BC’s fossil fuel folly. “Fossil Fuels? Fossil Fools,” it declares. The “o”s are painted a hazardous yellow, and within each is an unequivocal “x”. The protest’s specific target is the pipeline intended to carry carbon-intensive crude from Alberta’s tar-sands to refineries in the US southern Gulf Coast; the protest’s broader target is the industrial development that is adding carbon dioxide to an already stressed biosphere.

People who are concerned about global climate change are watching the steep rise of global carbon dioxide emissions. While a few nations have been heroic in their efforts to cut these emissions, international efforts have been eminently unsuccessful. So BC’s strategy to export energy — massive amounts of LNG, increasing quantities of coal, and perhaps a tide-water port for Alberta’s bitumen — is generating justifiable scrutiny, criticism and concern. People are counting carbon, dreading the consequences and registering their objections.

Not surprisingly, numerous rallies are being held opposing the Keystone XL pipeline. Natural gas is also the subject of worry. Although it’s an energy that produces only half the carbon dioxide of coal when burned, some experts think that the massive drilling required, combined with the escaped methane from fracking, may make natural gas as carbon intensive as coal. Coal, too, is a target of protest. It causes ecological damage when mined, produces numerous toxic pollutants when burned, and its industrial use generates the world’s largest single source of global carbon dioxide emissions.

Since we all live on a planet with one shared atmosphere, BC cannot embark on a strategy of exporting fossil fuel energy without calculating the global consequences. So it must expect both criticism and resistance from those who are counting carbon. Indeed, BC cannot even claim the virtue that its forests are sequestering carbon because new evidence suggests that the mountain pine beetle infestation is so massive that the province’s forests are now carbon negative — they are producing more carbon dioxide than they are presently storing. Even BC’s claim that natural gas is a carbon bargain is suspect because any gains in reducing CO2 emissions will likely be lost by the energy-intensive process of compressing huge quantities of it for export as liquid natural gas (LNG). Then more greenhouse gases are emitted when transporting the LNG by ship to distant destinations.

If BC were truly interested in its carbon virtue, it might note a study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (Jane Petch, Island Tides, Feb. 28/13) which found that all BC’s energy needs could probably be met by hydro electricity. Electrical consumption in the province is flat and any increase in demand can likely be met by efficiency improvements. This ethical option is undermined by the expanding industrial demands of mining, gas production and LNG projects.

BC is attempting to justify its strategy of exporting LNG by arguing that this relatively clean fuel — a debatable claim — will displace the use of coal elsewhere, thereby reducing net global carbon dioxide emissions. But a global review of coal use suggests otherwise. And BC’s argument is further compromised by its record coal exports. A province more idealistic and less opportunistic could at least stabilize its share of global carbon dioxide emissions by cutting its coal exports to compensate for its LNG exports — something it is not considering.

Between 2001 and 2010 the US was able to reduce its coal use by 5 percent, helping it cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 1.7 percent (NewScientist, Nov. 17/12). But during that same period, global coal consumption increased by 47 percent, simply because other countries are dramatically increasing their consumption. As a fuel, coal is cheap, readily available, and its carbon dioxide output is wholly unregulated, unsanctioned and free. It now produces 40 percent of the world’s electricity. And global consumption is at record levels. China, which uses three times the US consumption of coal, is showing no signs of reducing its use. In fact, China has new coal-fired electrical plants in construction that will exceed the entire coal-fired production of electricity in the US.

According to statistics in NewScientist, the amount of coal used on the planet is staggering. “Global consumption is about 71 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, which is equal to the daily oil output of more than eight Saudi Arabias” (Ibid.). This means that any coal exported from BC will simply go to feed the voracious global hunger for energy. And any LNG exported will not displace coal; it will simply be added to the climate crisis already unfolding. And any export of LNG will will eventually compromise BC’s own energy needs.

If BC is going to export massive quantities of its natural gas, how is it to meet its own long-term energy needs? What are the environmental consequences of producing the extra energy required to power the drilling, compressing and mining of resources for export? What are the monetary and social costs of such a strategy? What are the economic traps in such infrastructure investment, considering that countries such as Australia already have 17 LNG plants in development? And what are the ethical implications of exporting fossil fuel energy to a world that is already wounding itself with excessive carbon dioxide emissions? Are these not valid questions that must be considered in BC’s energy strategy? From a considered perspective, BC is joining the march down the path of fossil fuel folly.