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BC LNG Deal Lets Petronas off Hook for Two Kinds of Emissions
BC LNG Deal Lets Petronas off Hook for Two Kinds of Emissions
Carbon ‘free pass’ imperils BC’s climate targets, say critics.
The B.C. government plans to subsidize Malaysian gas giant Petronas to the tune of $16 million, in part due to a promise to exclude a significant chunk of the greenhouse gas emissions from the Pacific NorthWest LNG project from compliance penalties, DeSmog Canada has learned.
British Columbia’s politicians are in a special summer sitting at the legislature right now to debate Bill-30, the Liquefied Natural Gas Project Agreements Act, which will allow the government to enter into a $36-billion agreement with Petronas and pave the way for B.C.’s first major liquefied natural gas export plant, located near Prince Rupert.
Under the terms of the 140-page deal, the province would compensate Pacific NorthWest LNG if future governments raise income tax rates for LNG operations, add carbon taxes that specifically target the industry, or make changes to rules on greenhouse gas emissions. That could result in the provincepaying out $25 million a year or more.
While the compensation clause has commanded the lion’s share of attention, DeSmog Canada has learned that the B.C. government has quietly excluded two sources of Petronas’ carbon emissions from compliance standards, which will result in the province paying out millions of dollars in subsidies.
‘Under the radar’ change
In promising the world’s “cleanest” LNG facilities, Premier Christy Clark set benchmark requirements for the facilities’ carbon emissions. If a company fails to meet the benchmark, they must pay compliance penalties into a climate offset or green technology fund.
However, the province has also created an incentive program, which promises to pay a significant portion — between 50 and 100 per cent — of those compliance fees if companies come close to meeting the benchmark.
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TPP Deal Puts BC’s Privacy Laws in the Crosshairs
TPP Deal Puts BC’s Privacy Laws in the Crosshairs
If negotiators get their way, data could more freely flow across borders.
British Columbia’s privacy laws are in the crosshairs of the nearly completed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. If you’re wondering what the heck data privacy protections have to do with trade, you’re not alone. Public awareness of the far-reaching, 12-country negotiation is scant, with polls showing three-quarters of Canadians have never even heard of the TPP.
Unfortunately for privacy advocates in B.C. and the rest of the country, the advancement of “digital free trade” is a high priority for the U.S. in the negotiations. This carefully chosen euphemism conjures up the free flow of information, the convenience of cloud computing, even escaping Internet censorship. It all sounds so positive.
The thing is, the TPP e-commerce chapter aims not only to free the movement of digital goods, such as software or downloadable music, but also to enshrine the rights of companies to freely move data — including records of financial transactions, consumer behaviour, online communications and medical histories — across borders. This personal data is much sought after by marketers, insurers and intelligence agencies that can build detailed profiles and histories of individuals, frequently without their knowledge or informed consent.
U.S. negotiators are pushing hard to eliminate national laws in TPP countries that require sensitive personal data to be stored on secure local servers, or within national borders. This goal collides with the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Act and similar regulations in Nova Scotia, which are listed as “foreign trade barriers” in a 2015 United States Trade Representative (USTR) report.
According to that report, the B.C. privacy laws “prevent public bodies such as primary and secondary schools, universities, hospitals, government-owned utilities, and public agencies from using U.S. services when personal information could be accessed from or stored in the United States.”
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BCers to Province: Stop the Senseless Water Giveaway
BCers to Province: Stop the Senseless Water Giveaway
Surrey residents pay $1,630 per million litres; why not Nestle or frackers?
“The province is not seeking to make a profit from water.” — BC Environment Minister Mary Polak
No kidding — not at $2.25 per million litres of cold, clean B.C. water!
But seriously minister, do you think that waiting till 2016 just to start charging multinational giant Nestle, other water bottlers, oil and gas frackers, amusement parks, garbage dumps and everyone else who wants millions of litres of water is appropriate?
Because tens of thousands of British Columbians are outraged their province will be giving away water for pennies. And until then it’s free.
Forget about making a profit — when Nestle can buy their 265 million litres for $596.25 — you aren’t even covering the cost of government writing up and mailing the invoice!
And Polak is actually proud of it.
“We don’t sell water. We charge administration fees for the management of that resource,” she toldthe Legislature in February without any hint of irony.
But Surrey residents pay $1.63 per 1,000 litres at home; at those rates Nestle would instead be paying $1,630 per million litres and over $431,950 for what it bottled last year.
And Vancouver’s flat water rate for non-metered houses is $568 this year.
Drought, outrage set in
So the Nestle giveaway is why last week’s column went viral.
And it’s also why a petition from consumer activists SumOfUs.org has over 200,000 signatures demanding B.C. charge higher water rates.
But there’s a faint hope clause — the B.C. Legislature just returned for an emergency sitting to pass laws allowing Petronas to develop its liquefied natural gas project.
If the BC Liberal government cared as much about B.C. water as they obviously do about LNG we could get the water rates increased in less than a week with opposition party cooperation.
Water is in exceedingly short supply as the heat wave and drought continue to force more H2O restrictions.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Metro Vancouver air quality comparable to Beijing
Health authorities advise caution due to smoke from hundreds of wildfires across B.C.
Smoke from wildfires in the Interior of British Columbia blankets the Lions Gate Bridge in Vancouver. Health officials in the province have issued air quality warnings as a result of the fires. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)
Health authorities say Metro Vancouver’s air quality has dipped to levels close to those found in major Chinese polluted cities such as Beijing, and are warning residents to stay indoors, due in part to the rampant wildfires in B.C.
“I would say that the air quality that we’ve experienced recently [in B.C.] and are experiencing now is unfortunately something that residents in a lot of cities in China experience on quite a regular basis, which I think is quite concerning because these are certainly levels that pose a risk for human health and well-being,” said Fraser Health medical health officer Dr. Lisa Mu.
- B.C. fires: smoky skies and how to avoid them
- B.C. wildfires: what you need to know
- B.C. wildfires blanket province in smoke
The string of forest fires currently burning in the province forced Environment Canada to issue air quality advisories on Monday for several areas, including Metro Vancouver.
The sharp decrease in air quality is mostly due to small particles from the fires, which can irritate people’s lungs.
The highest concentration of particulate matter in the air has been found in North Burnaby, where levels are not far behind those in Beijing. The sprawling Chinese city is notorious for its poor air quality. It’s often engulfed in smog for days on end as China contends with rampant air pollution stemming from its decades of economic growth.
Particulate matter numbers:
- Beijing: 144 µg/m3
- Burnaby north: 112 µg/m3
- Vancouver: 60.1 µg/m3
- Abbotsford: 58 µg/m3
- Paris: 56 µg/m3
Note: These figures are accurate for 7 p.m. PT on Monday. Source: Air Quality B.C.
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Why B.C. may be in for a long, hot summer
A dry spring, a warmer than usual Pacific Ocean, and an El Niño means the hot weather could be here to stay
Whenever temperatures approach 30 C in Metro Vancouver, it’s a talker.
While the thermostat does get close once or twice each summer, this particular heat wave has a lot of added factors. First of all, it’s early, as seasonal highs for Vancouver right now are just 20 C.
And the forecast temperatures will likely end up 10 degrees above that this weekend — numbers more reminiscent of July or August.
This heat wave will also be intense. Temperatures will steadily climb right across southern B.C. over the next few days, peaking on Sunday at 30 degrees for the South Coast and approaching the 40s in the Interior.
Daily temperature records will fall, but so too will many all-time hottest June day records. It looks like we will, at least, get close for places like Vancouver (30.6 C), Kelowna (38 C) and Kamloops (39.1 C).
Finally, this heat is just the latest ‘extreme’ in what has been an incredibly warm and dry year overall. Most of B.C. is coming out of a winter of record low snow packs.
Long range forecast calls for hot summer
This past May was the driest on record for most of the province. So far, just a fraction of expected June rain has fallen. And in general, temperatures have been above seasonal for weeks on end.
This provides that much more of an impact for the hot weather forecast when it comes to fire danger and drought concerns. After an explosive start to the fire season, and reservoirs dropping at an alarming speed, a dry forecast ramps up the danger and a hot one means evaporation of any moisture happens at a faster rate.
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Logging Plans Could Rekindle BC’s War in the Woods
Logging Plans Could Rekindle BC’s War in the Woods
Teal Jones marked our ‘no-go zone’ for clear-cut. Here’s what happens next.
Eight months ago, a hiker and friend of our organization found new surveying tape in the central Walbran Valley. There, centred around the iconic Castle Grove, stands one of the largest intact tracts of unlogged old growth rainforest on southern Vancouver Island.
The area was ground zero for B.C.’s war in the woods more than 20 years ago. Grassroots action swept the province and saved ancient forest in the nearby Carmanah Valley and in other parts of the Walbran.
Surveying tape usually signals new cutting, so I contacted Teal Jones, the logging company that holds rights to the area, and asked them about their plans. To my surprise, they got back to me — they even vowed to work to incorporate my concerns in their logging plans. This was a huge departure from the typical communications with logging companies active on Vancouver Island.
In a series of emails that lasted months, I highlighted the scarcity of forests of this quality and scale, the importance of these ecosystems, and the value of standing old-growth. I sent Teal Jones maps that highlighted the most ecologically sensitive areas — our ”no-go zone” for logging.
Just last week, Teal Jones sent us their plans, confirming eight new cut blocks immediately surrounding the Castle Grove. All eight fall in our top priority area for maintaining ecological integrity. This is the most sensitive part of the valley — a strip of primordial forest between the Walbran River and the boundary of Carmanah-Walbran Provincial Park.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Nine Months After Polley Breach, Alaskans Seek Compensation Guarantee from BC
Nine Months After Polley Breach, Alaskans Seek Compensation Guarantee from BC
Proposed northern BC mines ‘source of great angst in Juneau.’
Earlier this month, Heather Hardcastle, a commercial fisherwoman from Juneau, Alaska met in Williams Lake, B.C. with members of the Tsilhqot’in First Nation. They shared a meal of wild Alaskan salmon that Hardcastle brought as a symbolic gesture: This fish was a reminder of all there was to lose.
After lunch, Hardcastle and her team of Alaska visitors boarded a helicopter and flew 25 minutes away to the site of the Mount Polley accident, the scene of a massive breach last August of its mine waste dam near the town of Likely, B.C.
The breach released millions of cubic metres of contaminated water into Quesnel Lake, which feeds into the Fraser River.
Nine months later, Jacinda Mack, a Xatsull woman from the Soda Creek reserve and one of many residents living near the path of the spill, invited the Alaskans to Williams Lake to see firsthand the main effect of that accident.
On the Fraser River, contamination from the mine breachthreatened the run of Sockeye salmon that spawns in Quesnel Lake.
“We saw where [Mack] was raised, and where they used to fish on the Fraser where people fished for thousands of years, and they’re not fishing there anymore. It’s heartbreaking,” Hardcastle said. “It’s a stunning and gorgeous area but it was just so sad. It feels selfish to be thinking about us and our water, but it lit a fire under me. We have to do something.”
It was an eye-opening sight to Hardcastle, who lives and works in southeast Alaska, downstream from a number of open-pit mines located in northwest B.C., with more under construction and opening soon.
Hardcastle grew up in the 1970s, during which time her parents fought the B.C. Tulsequah Chief mine, located 65 kilometres north of Juneau, Alaska, which leaked acid mine drainage in 1957 and still hasn’t been cleaned up. The polluted Tulsequah River empties into the salmon-rich Taku River.
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BC Natural Gas Reserves Inflated, Revenues Overstated, Report Finds
BC Natural Gas Reserves Inflated, Revenues Overstated, Report Finds
Analyst David Hughes offers another challenge to the province’s nascent industry.
A new report on liquefied natural gas prospects for British Columbia challenges government claims that gas exports will lower greenhouse gas emissions, or generate $100 billion in profits for the province.
The report published today by David Hughes, one of Canada’s foremost energy analysts and a former federal government geoscientist, also contends that the provincial government has vastly overestimated the amount of gas available for export.
The National Energy Board has approved 12 export licences to Asia or the United States with another seven under review along the B.C. coast.* The provincial government, which has lowered taxes and royalties to promote the new industry, expects only three to five terminals may be eventually built.
Due to depressed oil prices, global competition and cost over-runs in the capital intensive industry, not one project has yet announced a final investment decision.
Government fact sheets claim, for example, that “British Columbia’s natural gas supply is estimated at over 2,933 trillion cubic feet,” or enough gas to last 150 years.
But Hughes notes the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission estimates raw gas reserves (gas that can be drilled and recovered based on existing economics and well data) for the province at 42.3 trillion cubic feet.
The commission calculates “marketable resources,” or what industry might be able to find, drill and frack — a highly uncertain figure, due to high decline rates and the spotty nature of unconventional shale resources — at 442 trillion cubic feet.
As a result, Hughes calls the government’s inflated figure of 2,933 trillion cubic feet, or 70 times more than proven reserves listed by the commission, “a false and irresponsible statement.”
Windfall profits questioned
Government claims about earning windfall profits from gas exports also have no basis in real economics, Hughes argues in his report.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
BC LNG Lost Its Window of Opportunity, Study Finds
BC LNG Lost Its Window of Opportunity, Study Finds
Projects unlikely to be economic for another decade: Oxford Institute energy report.
The window of opportunity to capture Asian gas markets has eluded proposed liquefied natural gas projects in British Columbia, and as a consequence it is unlikely that any LNG projects will likely be commissioned or economic for another decade.
That’s the central conclusion of a new study on the prospects for natural gas extraction and export in Canada by the London-based Oxford Institute for Energy Studies released earlier this month. The institute operates as a non-profit charity that has looked at the economics and politics of energy since 1982.
Despite large volumes of shale gas and government hype over the industry, the study found that changing energy markets, global price volatility, increased competition, and LNG cost overruns have dramatically changed the demand picture for high-risk and capital intensive LNG projects around the world.
Even Asian demand for natural gas has softened significantly over the last year. Demand for imported gas in Japan is now “flat,” and in Korea it has “dampened,” the report says.
China’s thirst for natural gas has also slackened since 2010 due to pipeline expansions and the signing of long-term LNG contracts.
According to Cambridge Energy Associates, spot LNG imports into China dried up last summer, “and spot prices last winter, usually a peak demand season, were reported to be less than $7 per million BTU, from as high as $20 several years ago.”
(The BTU is a standard unit of energy which represents the amount of heat energy needed to raise the temperature of a pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. It is equal to 1055 joules, another common energy measurement.)
Furthermore, LNG construction in the United States, Australia and other countries will be bringing more gas to global markets between 2015 and 2020, explains the Oxford Institute study.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Who Is BC’s Big LNG Partner? A Petronas Primer
Who Is BC’s Big LNG Partner? A Petronas Primer
Group led by Malaysia’s national oil company aims to build terminal near Prince Rupert.
Just one week after the Lax Kw’alaams band rejected a $1-billion offer by Petronas to build a liquefied natural gas terminal at the mouth of the Skeena River in British Columbia, Premier Christy Clark has signed an agreement with Malaysia’s national oil company to “establish the path to a final investment decision on the project.”
Part of that path includes a long-term commitment by the provincial government not to raise natural gas royalties, regardless of changes in global prices for the commodity.
Natural gas, like oil, is one of the world’s most volatile commodities in price.
“With this certainty, industry can plan their operations over a longer period of time and commit capital to jobs and production needs, while the Province has a guaranteed royalty revenue each year,” said a government news release.
Pacific NorthWest LNG, which is largely owned by Petronas, has yet to make a final investment decision, and the proposed multibillion-dollar project near Prince Rupert must still pass an environmental review.
Just what kind of company is Petronas, and what’s its relationship to the Malaysian government? The Tyee looked at the public record.
1. The government of Malaysia set upthe national oil company in 1974 when oil prices jumped from $1.50 to $12. The government did so with the goal of safeguarding “the sovereign rights of Malaysia and the legitimate rights and interests of Malaysians in the ownership and development of petroleum resources.” The company’s success has helped the government to reach out to the Muslim world.
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Petronas Hoping To Buy First Nations Tribes’ Support For $1 Billion
Petronas Hoping To Buy First Nations Tribes’ Support For $1 Billion
Petronas is willing to pony up nearly $1 billion to secure the support of First Nations tribes in western Canada for its natural gas export project. The Malaysian state-owned oil company is offering C$1.15 billion (USD$950 million) to the Lax Kw’alaams tribe in order to build an LNG export facility at the Prince Rupert port.
The offer would consist of annual payments over 40 years. For example, Petronas would pay over $12 million in the first year, with payments rising by 1 to 5 percent annually (depending on production), culminating in a $50 million payment in the 40th year. Also, tribe members would have a sort of preferred status for open jobs at the Petronas’ Pacific Northwest LNG facility. The offeramounts to about $320,000 per person. The Lax Kw’alaams tribe will vote on the offer in May.
Related: Is This The Top For Oil Prices For Now?
The tribes argue the price is hardly exorbitant. When one considers it will be spread over 40 years and the project will result in large land use impacts on local communities, the $1 billion is a fair price. “This will be a real game-changer for many First Nations in terms of how they can build their future,” John Rustad, the Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation Minister in British Columbia, told the Globe and Mail in an interview on April 30.
Interestingly, it could create a new benchmark for major fossil fuel projects on indigenous lands. For other projects to move forward, affected tribes could use the pending offer for the Lax Kw’alaams as leverage.
The big offer from Petronas is somewhat of an afterthought for the C$36 billion proposal. That steep price tag has forced a rethink within the Malaysian company. In December 2014, Petronas decided to put off a final investment decision, hesitating to commit that much money to an LNG export project during a period in which LNG markets are not doing so well.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
BC Climate Change Progress Stalled, Critics Say
BC Climate Change Progress Stalled, Critics Say
‘We know we need to do more,’ says environment minister.
Lately, Premier Christy Clark has been bragging about British Columbia’s record fighting climate change, but observers say that pride is misplaced.
“They’re talking a lot about being a world leader in climate action,” said Jens Wieting, a campaigner with the Sierra Club of BC. That’s misleading considering the province’s recent record on carbon emissions, he said. “We are currently moving in the wrong direction.”
A B.C. government press release dated April 13 trumpeted the “world-leading standard B.C. has set for climate action” and challenged other jurisdictions to meet or beat the province’s standard. It noted Clark was set to speak to meetings of the World Bank-International Monetary Fund on April 17 about the B.C. carbon tax, “which sets a powerful example for the world.”
Clark also congratulated California on new targets in late April that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2030, noting, “In B.C., we have been leading by example since 2008, when we introduced our carbon tax.”
Even the election of Rachel Notley as premier of Alberta was occasion for Clark to say that maybe now that province would consider adopting a carbon tax like B.C.’s.
Rising emissions
But as the Sierra Club’s Wieting points out, the hot air from Clark and the B.C. government comes as the province’s climate change record has slipped.
While B.C. claimed to have met its interim target of a six per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2007 levels in 2012, a year later they had gone back up by 2.4 per cent to 63 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, Wieting said. He cited recently released figures from theNational Inventory of greenhouse gas sources and sinks.
“We can’t afford to move in the wrong direction and see our emissions increasing,” he said. “The science is clear we’re running out of time.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
No Wealth, No Justice in $1 Billion LNG Offer to First Nation Band
No Wealth, No Justice in $1 Billion LNG Offer to First Nation Band
Here’s why Lax Kw’alaams still side with the salmon.
Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian theologian and writer known for his work among the poor and the excluded, is credited with coining a phrase that is as true as any you’ll ever hear: ”The opposite of poverty is not wealth — it is justice.”
It is a phrase that has also been attributed to Bryan Stevenson, founder of America’s Equal Justice Initiative and a man Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called, without qualification, ”America’s Nelson Mandela.”
Regardless of the provenance of the expression, it is the potency of the underlying idea that should be freighted into the unseemly scramble to unlock northern British Columbia’s dangerously exaggerated liquefied natural gas (LNG) bonanza, especially now that some coastal First Nations are bellying up to the pipe to get their overdue share of Canada’s resource riches.
To read reports emanating from the mouth of the Skeena River, the energy sector thinks it has finally cracked the nut on how to successfully partner with First Nations people who, inconveniently, stand afore a variety of proposed LNG plants and pipeline deals. These aboriginal people have rights along the planned pipeline routes, and also at tidewater, where Canada is trying to unstopper our oil and gas supplies so the Chinese can drain off our energy sovereignty like so much bilge water.
Industry’s latest poster child is the Lax Kw’alaams Band, whose main village at Port Simpson is situated on the coast north of Prince Rupert, where the waters of the Skeena and the Nass rivers mingle and nurse some of the finest wild salmon populations left on the planet.
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Squamish Mayor Says No to LNG Plant, with Strings Attached
Squamish Mayor Says No to LNG Plant, with Strings Attached
Terminal pumped by premier would process up to 2.1 million tonnes of gas a year.
The mayor of Squamish and her council will not support the proposed Eagle Mountain pipeline and Woodfibre LNG plant in the region unless 18 conditions are met, according to an April 30 letter to the provincial Environmental Assessment Office.
“Due to the significant outstanding information and the community concerns that have not been adequately addressed, and that there are no guarantees at this time that that they will be satisfactorily addressed, the current applications are not supportable by the District of Squamish,” said the letter, signed by Mayor Patricia Heintzman.
The Woodfibre LNG terminal, planned for the site of a former pulp and paper mill seven kilometres west-southwest of downtown Squamish, would have a 250,000 cubic metre storage capacity and process up to 2.1 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas a year.
Owner Pacific Oil and Gas Ltd. is part of Indonesian billionaire Sukanto Tanoto’s empire. Natural gas supplier FortisBC, which built a pipeline in 1990 for the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island, proposes a 52-km long, 20-inch diameter gas pipeline from north of the Coquitlam watershed to Squamish that would feed the plant.
Squamish council is already in a legal battle with FortisBC, which filed a B.C. Supreme Court petition in March, hoping a judge will overturn council’s refusal to permit borehole testing for the pipeline.
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Fukushima radiation measured on B.C. shore for 1st time
Trace cesium detected, but levels far below limit for safe drinking water
Trace amounts of radiation from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan have been detected on North American shores for the first time, but researchers say the amount of radiation is not a concern.
Radioactive forms of the element cesium that could only have come from Fukushima were detected in samples collected on Feb. 19 in Ucluelet, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, with the help of the Ucluelet Aquarium, scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution reported today.
The private, independent research organization is based in Cape Cod, Mass. It has been monitoring radiation levels along North American shores over the past 15 months with help from citizen scientists who are collecting samples from 60 sites along the U.S. and Canadian west coast and Hawaii, along with a Canadian-funded organization called inFORM led by University of Victoria oceanographer Jay Cullen.
Levels not alarming, expert says
Ken Buessler, the researcher who leads the Woods Hole monitoring program, said he expects more of the monitoring sites to show detectable levels of cesium-134 in coming months. However, the amounts of cesium-134 and cesium-137 in the B.C. sample were extremely low — just 1.4 and 5.8 becquerels per cubic metre of water respectively. Canada allows up to 10,000 becquerels of cesium-137 per cubic metre in drinking water.
“Today’s report is not alarming at all. It’s kind of to be expected,” he said.
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