Petronas’s Silence on BC LNG Act Sends Disquieting Signal
Busy passing project terms, BC forgot to check on events abroad.
As the British Columbia legislature passed its “historic” Liquefied Natural Gas Project Agreements Act on July 21 after a lively eight-day debate, the most important player for which the special summer session of Parliament was convened kept an aloof — and worrying — silence.
Petronas, the Malaysian state energy firm with a 62 per cent stake in a consortium proposing to build a US$36-billion LNG project near Prince Rupert, did not offer a public thank you or congratulatory statement to the B.C. government of Premier Christy Clark for its efforts and hard-earned legislative victory.
The Pacific NorthWest LNG (PNW) consortium’s other shareholders, Sinopec (10 per cent), Indian Oil Corp (10 per cent), Japan Petroleum Exploration (10 per cent), China Huadian (five per cent) and PetroleumBrunei (three per cent), have been equally quiet.
It was left to PNW to issue a brief statement that the act — followed by the July 23 ratification of 25-year agreement terms covering royalty, income tax credits and carbon emissions — “brings us one step closer to building Canada’s first world-scale LNG facility.”
“The remaining condition of our final investment decision, environmental approval from the government of Canada, is being worked on diligently with First Nations, stakeholders and government representatives.”
Petronas’s silence is significant as B.C.’s elaborate undertaking to create, debate and pass the LNG act had been made in direct response to the company’s high-profile complaints and threats to call off the project if it did not receive legal certainty and the offer of generous investment terms. Petronas did not reply to a request for comment on B.C.’s new act.
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