{"id":47774,"date":"2019-08-13T09:04:47","date_gmt":"2019-08-13T14:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=47774"},"modified":"2019-08-13T09:04:49","modified_gmt":"2019-08-13T14:04:49","slug":"bc-government-frets-over-climate-change-while-heavily-subsidizing-fracking-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=47774","title":{"rendered":"BC Government Frets Over Climate Change While Heavily Subsidizing Fracking Companies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/Opinion\/2019\/08\/12\/BC-Government-Fret-Climate-Change-Subsidize-Fracking\/\">BC Government Frets Over Climate Change While Heavily Subsidizing Fracking Companies<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Worse, the giveaway probably isn\u2019t needed, with the global industry desperate for new gas fields.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thetyee.ca\/Analysis\/2019\/03\/27\/Fracking-Pipes.jpg\" alt=\"Fracking-Pipes.jpg\"\/><figcaption>Fracking does not need subsidies to be profitable. But we still hand \u2019em out.&nbsp;Photo via Shutterstock.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019re in a climate crisis. So why did the B.C. government give oil and gas companies $663 million in subsidies last year so they would produce more fracked natural gas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The NDP government hasn\u2019t declared a climate emergency. But it commissioned a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www2.gov.bc.ca\/gov\/content\/environment\/climate-change\/adaptation\/risk-assessment\">report<\/a>&nbsp;that warns of more severe wildfire seasons, water shortages, heat waves, landslides and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite that, the government handed almost two-thirds of a billion dollars to fossil fuel companies \u2014&nbsp;$130 per person in the province \u2014 so they\u2019ll extract more methane, more quickly. (The numbers are all from the always-interesting&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www2.gov.bc.ca\/gov\/content\/governments\/finances\/public-accounts\">Public Accounts<\/a>&nbsp;released last month by the province\u2019s auditor general.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which is perverse in a time when we\u2019re warned of climate disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>British Columbians own the oil and gas under the ground. Companies pay royalties to the government for the right to extract and sell it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since 2003, the B.C. government has been putting natural gas on sale. It has cut royalties to subsidize the industry\u2019s road construction and reward any operators who drilled in the summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And most significantly, it started offering the gas at a deep discount for companies that drilled \u201cdeep wells.\u201d The industry argument was that they were riskier and more expensive; the government had to sell the gas more cheaply to encourage companies to drill. It increased the discounts in 2009 and 2014, giving even bigger breaks to the fossil fuel companies. (Who were also big BC Liberal&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.policyalternatives.ca\/newsroom\/news-releases\/52-million-political-donations-and-more-22000-lobbying-contacts\">donors<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The discounts \u2014 subsidies from taxpayers who have to pay more to make up for the lost revenue \u2014 have enriched fossil fuel companies for more than a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BC Government Frets Over Climate Change While Heavily Subsidizing Fracking Companies Worse, the giveaway probably isn\u2019t needed, with the global industry desperate for new gas fields. We\u2019re in a climate crisis. So why did the B.C. government give oil and gas companies $663 million in subsidies last year so they would produce more fracked natural [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[94,1053,331,16170,554,25601,5499],"class_list":["post-47774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","tag-british-columbia","tag-climate-crisis","tag-fracking","tag-government-subsidies","tag-natural-gas","tag-paul-willcocks","tag-the-tyee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47774"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47775,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47774\/revisions\/47775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}