BC Green Leader “Deeply Disappointed” With LNG Canada FID

Andrew Weaver, leader of the BC Green Party, sounded a lone voice of dissent moments after Anglo-Dutch major Shell announced a positive final investment decision on its C$40bn (US$31bn) LNG Canada project at Kitimat, on BC’s northern coast.

Weaver and his Green Party represent the other half of BC’s coalition government – led by NDP premier John Horgan – and have been opposed to the government’s new fiscal policy announced in March 2018 that paved the way for LNG Canada’s joint venture partners to approve the project.

“I am deeply disappointed that the NDP minority government’s tax giveaway has resulted in the country’s single biggest source of emissions receiving an FID,” Weaver said in a statement. “Adding such a massive new source of [greenhouse gas emissions] means that the rest of our economy will have to make even more sacrifices to meet our climate targets.”

Weaver complained that most of the financial benefit of the project will flow to manufacturing centres overseas, where the liquefaction modules will be fabricated, and that the project will not generate enough jobs.

“There may be as little as 100 permanent jobs at LNG Canada,” he said. “I believe we can create far more jobs in other industries that won’t drastically increase our emissions.”

LNG Canada, however, has said 900 workers will be employed at the 14mn metric tons/year first stage of the terminal, while 10,000 peak-period construction jobs will be created while the terminal and the companion Coastal GasLink pipeline are being built.

Weaver also said that BC taxpayers will be burdened by power rates that are “twice as high” as they are now and by debt taken on by Crown utility BC Hydro to build the C$10.7bn (US$8.4bn) Site C hydroelectric project on the Peace River in northeastern BC. The controversial 1,100-MW power station is considered key to electrifying much of the LNG Canada project, making its LNG output the “greenest” in the world in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

Horgan’s NDP, Weaver noted, were opposed to the LNG regime established by former Liberal premier Christy Clark, and “rightly noted” at the time that it did not offer fair value for BC’s gas resource and that emissions would be too high. That position, he said, changed dramatically this part March when Horgan announced a fiscal package based on relief from provincial sales tax during construction, new GHG emission standards and access to the same power rates as other industrial customers of BC Hydro.

“Our caucus was shocked when they turned around and delivered an even larger giveaway once in power,” Weaver said. “We did everything we could to deter them from making this decision, but we are only three MLAs up against the 84 whose parties support the heavy subsidization of this industry.”