Nine LNG Questions for British Columbians to Ask Their Politicians
Pressing queries in light of high-stakes Petronas agreement just passed.
Pacific Northwest LNG, a consortium that includes Petronas and Chinese refining giant Sinopec, intends to build an export terminal on Lelu Island near Prince Rupert. The Lax Kw’alaams have opposed the project as a threat to salmon and the Skeena River.
The unprecedented agreement, which critics havecharacterized as a crass economic giveaway, guarantees Malaysia’s state-owned company low royalties and low taxes for LNG over a historic 25 years.
Martyn Brown, former chief of staff to B.C. premier Gordon Campbell and a top strategic advisor to three provincial party leaders, has described the agreement as “environmentally reckless, fiscally foolhardy and socially irresponsible.”
The deal effectively makes it difficult for future governments to set LNG-specific carbon taxes or to impose new environmental rules aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. It locks in tax credits for 25 years. And it offers no job guarantees for British Columbians.
In addition to the terms of the agreement, politicians and citizens should now be asking nine critical questions about any LNG development in the province.
1. Have LNG projects become uneconomic?
Many LNG analysts now think the world is oversupplied with the product and that price volatility warrants project deferrals, especially for high-cost proposals in North America. Othersreckon that capital for major projects is rapidly drying up. Carbon Tracker, a non-profit group of financial analysts concerned about climate change, justreported that investors will likely mothball tens of billions of dollars in LNG investment because “there is a finite amount of fossil fuels that can be burnt over the next few decades if we are to prevent dangerous levels of climate change.”
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