So which LNG plants will be going ahead and in what order in BC?

dp

Mass opposition to Squamish LNG plant sparks calls for citizens' vote

A Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project in the backyard of Vancouver – the tourist-friendly Squamish district on the way to Whistler – was angrily opposed by more than one hundred residents outside a city hall meeting earlier this week.

The showcase led one sympathetic Squamish councillor – Patricia Heintzman – to voice the need at the council meeting for a citizen's vote on the future of the $1.6 billion Woodfibre LNG project.

“I’ve been on council for almost nine years, and I’ve never received letters like we do on LNG," said Heintzman in a later interview with the Vancouver Observer.

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/mass-opposition-squamish-lng-plant...

Christy Clark's pipedream of a "trillion dollar" economy is economically trashed in this article. 

Quote:

During B.C.’s 2013 election campaign, at a conference of energy economists in Washington, D.C., I spoke about how one of our politicians was promising huge benefits during the next decades from B.C. liquefied natural gas exports to eastern Asia. These benefits included lower income taxes, zero provincial debt, and a wealth fund for future generations. My remarks, however, drew laughter. ...

Why this reaction? The painful reality is that my economist colleagues smirk when people (especially politicians) assume extreme market imbalances will endure, whereas real-world evidence consistently proves they won’t. For B.C. Premier Christy Clark to make promises based on a continuation of today’s extreme difference between American and eastern Asian gas prices was, to be kind, laughable.

For many years, natural gas prices differed little from one region to another. But the shale-gas revolution in the U.S. in the past decade created a glut, causing rock-bottom prices in North America. Meanwhile, prices in eastern Asia were pegged to the price of oil, which has risen. These two trends led to a price divergence starting in 2008. ...

If that difference was to hold for several decades, producers could earn sufficient revenues from Asian sales to cover shale gas extraction, pipeline transport, cooling to liquid in LNG plants, shipment across the Pacific, healthy profits, and billions in royalties and corporate taxes. That’s an attractive image in an election. But it can quickly become a mirage as gas markets behave like markets.

In competitive markets, a price imbalance triggers multiple profit-seeking actions, which work to eliminate the difference — usually sooner than expected — by those hoping to benefit from it. In this case, there are many potential competitors for the gas demands of China, Japan and their neighbours. China can invite foreign companies to help develop its massive shale gas resources. It can buy from Russia, which has enormous gas resources. It can also buy from other central Asian countries, such as Kazakhstan. It can also encourage a bidding war between prospective LNG suppliers from many parts of the world, some of which will have lower production costs than B.C.

The result will push down the price in eastern Asia. As was easily predicted by my smirking colleagues, it’s already happening. Unofficial reports put the price of a recent gas contract between China and Russia at $10.50 per million British Thermal Units, far below the peak Asian price, and close to (if not below) the cost of sending B.C. gas to China. At this price, there will be no government royalties, no lower income taxes, no debt retirement, no wealth fund. Maybe no LNG plants.

If any LNG plants are built in B.C., they will likely be constructed and operated as cheaply as possible, which will put the lie to another promise of Clark’s. In a province with legislated targets for reducing carbon pollution, she promised B.C. would have “the cleanest LNG produced anywhere in the world from well-head to waterline.”

As it turns out, this promise is easy to verify. Experts know the cleanest LNG in the world is the Snovit project in Norway, which emits 0.35 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of LNG. The under-construction Gorgon facility in Australia will match it.

But, public documents indicate British Columbia’s proposed LNG industry will be three times worse, producing one tonne of CO2 per tonne of LNG. Were three such facilities built as proposed, they would bring oilsands-scale carbon pollution to B.C., doubling our current emissions and making it impossible to meet our legislated targets.

We could build the cleanest LNG systems in the world. This would require reducing methane leaks from processes and pipelines, capturing and storing carbon pollution, and using renewable energy to produce electricity for processing and cooling natural gas, as Clean Energy Canada has recently showed.

But this is unlikely, especially as those Asian gas prices fall. So brace yourself for another barrage of Orwellian doublespeak from government and industry, in which cleanest means dirty, great public wealth means modest private profits, and revised climate targets mean missed climate targets. No doubt my economist colleagues will be amused. But should they?

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Opinion+another+pipe+dream/100560...

The confirming evidence is growing for my earlier prediction:

That as the proponents back away and/or distance themselves from their projects, and the pricing pressure grows, Christy Clark will ratchet back the various revenue streams government expects to get.

It seems like Petronas will go ahead no matter the international market conditions. The reasons the project works for them are much more complex and opaque. No other project is in that position.

There will be all manner of shell games for Christy Clark to maintain that the projected revenue streams are far more than what the liars know they really will be.

KenS wrote:

There will be all manner of shell games for Christy Clark to maintain that the projected revenue streams are far more than what the liars know they really will be.

Where is the BC NDP on this these days?

Still barely willing to barely obliquely mention that the figures might be a bit cooked? Unwilling to flat out say the empress has no clothes, for fear of possibly maybe being portrayed as sort of 'anti-development?

KenS wrote:

KenS wrote:

There will be all manner of shell games for Christy Clark to maintain that the projected revenue streams are far more than what the liars know they really will be.

Where is the BC NDP on this these days?

Still barely willing to barely obliquely mention that the figures might be a bit cooked? Unwilling to flat out say the empress has no clothes, for fear of possibly maybe being portrayed as sort of 'anti-development?

Horgan just reshuffled the shadow cabinet this week. According to Vaughn Palmer, senior political columnist in the BC media and no great friend of the NDP, he expects the NDP to be much more active in their opposition in the fall, once the summer doldrums are over. We shall see. Palmer's article can be found below.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Vaughn+Palmer+Opposition+prepares+join+...

V

Quote:

The B.C. Oil and Gas Commission, which regulates the natural gas sector, says they have a good handle on the issue of leaking wells.

The provincial agency says it has robust regulations and processes in place for detection, measurement and assessment of any possible leaks. Problems must be measured and reported to the commission. ...

Compare the impression given their to the actual 'handle' and 'regulations' they have.

There is no routine measurement to check for leaking. Period.

IF a problem comes to the attention of a company it is then required to put in place measures for detection and assessment.

Quote:

Last month, B.C. deputy premier Rich Coleman dismissed concerns raised by the scientific fracking panel that Dusseault sat on, saying B.C. carries out fracking as well or better than anybody else in the world.

The standard refrain: we ensure 'best practices'.

Which is the best practices oil companies are willing to do. [If a jurisdiction were to demand more, there will be no oil and gas industry work.]

..and the struggle is broad. and focused on solutions.

British Doctors Vote To Divest From Fossil Fuels

The British Medical Association (BMA) has voted to end its investments in the fossil fuel industry making it the first medical organization in the world to do so. It will look to instead invest in renewable energy.

The proposal to divest from fossil fuels was passed at the BMA's annual meeting in June. The organization is the representative body for UK doctors.

Simon Bullock, a senior campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said, “More and more institutions are divesting from fossil fuels as climate change impacts grow. It's fantastic that doctors are leading from the front on this critical public health issue.”

The motion was put forward on the basis that climate change presents “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century,” as described in a report by the UCL-Lancet Commission in 2009.

The BMA has become part of a growing movement of institutions to divest from the oil, coal and gas industries – joining 13 universities and colleges in the U.S. alone, 28 of the world's cities, 28 investment foundations and 41 religious institutions including the World Council of Churches, which announced its commitment to divestment earlier this month....

http://www.occupy.com/article/british-doctors-vote-divest-fossil-fuels

KenS wrote:

I can see that the NDP may be stronger in general as opposition. But I dont see anything in there, nor have I heard anything else, to indicate, the NDP might go more for the jugular on the unravelling claims of riches from LNG and fracking.

Seems to me Horgan hinself is pretty entrenched in being careful not to dash the hopes that those claims stoke.... to stay carefully on the side of only questioning the extreme depth of the fantasies and the PR purposes that serves for the BCLibs. "Can this government deliver the LNG goodies for us?" Etc.

I know it was never in the realm of possibilities that he and the NDP were going to become strong critics of the schemes. But is there reason to see there may be some kind of substantively different tacking?

After the NDP lost last year's election following Dix's flip flop on Kinder Morgan, it became even more gun shy in addressing these issues. The flip flop resulted in a total wipeout in the Interior, except for its traditional Kootenays stronghold, as blue collar workers joined the traditional right wing coalition fearing that this would lead to loss of jobs for them. Unless the NDP addresses the employment question in a creative manner, especially in the Interior, it risks suffering the same fate in the future. It will tend to tread softly on these issues, although Horgan will tend to attack the Liberals on other issues with greater energy because of his personality than Dix displayed. 

Whether it was the flip flop on Kinder Morgan or the vacilliating image Dix project because of the flip flop, it was at this point that a substantial portion of the NDP support drained away, especially in the Interior, where it was nearly wiped out. The party is very nervous about addressing the fossil fuel issue because of this. However, if it does not address the issue of employment in the Interior, where many communities are very dependent on one or two industries, the odds are very high it will lose the next election. 

Renewable energy also generates far more employment for the same amount of investment. 

Quote:

According to an analysis of 13 independent reports and studies of the clean energy industry by UC Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL), renewable energy technologies create more jobs per average megawatt (MW) of power generated, and per dollar invested in construction, manufacturing, and installation when compared to coal or natural gas. Over the course of a 10-year period the solar industry creates 5.65 jobs per million dollars in investment, the wind energy industry 5.7 jobs, and the coal industry only 3.96.1 In the case of coal mining, wind and solar energy generate 40 percent more jobs per dollar invested.

http://greenforall.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/job-creation...

The growing global shift away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy could provide both a economic and employment growth strategy for the NDP if it can build a forceful message on this. 

kropotkin1951 wrote:

 Show me the stats that prove that theory.

 

As you no doubt know, stats do not prove theories, only provide evidence in support or against them (mathematical theorems provide proofs). Lets first of all look at Christy's own words on Dix's flip flop and how it affected the Liberals. What happened is not as straight forward as one might think.

Quote:

The NDP policy flip-flop on Kinder Morgan’s pipeline plans in the middle of the 2013 provincial election campaign has been written into the history books as a fatal miscalculation. But Premier Christy Clark revealed Saturday that her own B.C. Liberal strategists were so rattled by the move, they wanted her to follow suit. ...

Halfway through the 2013 campaign, the NDP seemed comfortably ahead of the Liberals and felt their biggest threat came from the B.C. Green Party. So Mr. Dix marked Earth Day in Kamloops where he abandoned the “matter of principle” that he would not take a stand until the project was formally proposed, and instead announced his party would oppose the expansion of the oil pipeline.

For the next four days, the Liberal pollsters and strategists watched anxiously as Mr. Dix, already well ahead in the polls, began to grow their lead while the Liberals flatlined.

Speaking with reporters after her convention speech on Saturday, the Premier said she was not part of the internal debate about the need for a Liberal policy about-face – she was on the campaign bus while strategists back at the campaign headquarters debated how to respond.

Ms. Clark said she was asked to get off the fence and take a stand against the pipeline, because the NDP was jeopardizing her party’s support in coastal ridings – including her own Vancouver-Point Grey seat. ...

Instead, she came out swinging against Mr. Dix on the issue in a radio debate four days later. Ms. Clark spent the final two weeks of the campaign hammering the theme that the NDP would threaten job creation, that rejecting Kinder Morgan made the NDP the “party of no.”

“The NDP were going up in the polls every day... the Green support started to coalesce behind the NDP and we were pretty far behind in the polls, we couldn’t really afford them making gains in support. But to me, it seemed so obvious that if you stand for something, you have got to stick with it. And I also believed the election would be about character as much as anything else,” she said.

On Election Day, the NDP succeeded in defeating Ms. Clark in her own riding, but lost the election.

“In the end, standing firm on my values was more important than winning,” Ms. Clark said. “Thankfully we got to do both.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/bc-liberals-were-re...

One can argue that it took several days for the impact of Dix's votes to register with the voters, so numbers were following already trending directions for a few days, as is often the case with changes in poll numbers following debates, or one could argue that Dix's change on Kinder Morgan was winning at that point in the campaign, or one could argue that the poll direction had not yet shifted because Christy had not had the opportunity to press home her message that an NDP government would damage the economy because it was not focused on strengthening the economy through LNG and other projects, many of which would occur in the Interior.

The polls were fucked what don't you get about that.  The NDP campaign also did a shitty job of tracking internally because they thought it was in the bag. Tracking numbers is an anal thing that winning campaigns obsess over because every political operative knows you can't trust the pollsters to be accurate enough and regional enough.  I lived in the East Kootenays for seven years and my wife worked in Kelowna for a couple of years. The "Interior" is a whole set of regions with different political histories. The Okanagon elects anything but the NDP.  In the Kootenays the NDP still did very well especially given the overall ineptitude of the central campaign.

You are right that the NDP needs a vison for the economy. Hell they need a vision period.  Given that the people who run the party have no ideoogy to guide them except a desire to form government its not like they have a foundaton to construct anything on.

What Krop said in the last paparagraph. And even if its put very different, I think jerrym is saying the same.

There is nowhere in the NDP thats ever adopted an intellectual strategy of, "hey, it looks like its lemons we get, we need to figure out how to win with lemonade."

Its always- "those are lemons. People want pop." And oh shit, we forgot again, offering them pop always starts out working for us, but then bites us in the ass. 

Now lets look at the polls. In general, the polls showed that the NDP had a huge lead throughout the campaign on Vancouver Island. In Metro Vancouver early on the NDP had a quite large lead and a substantial lead in the Interior.

Dix's change on Kinder Morgan occurred on April 22nd. The following poll results are from "British Columbia general election, 2013"'s summary of polls. I did not analyze every poll but tried to be fair in selecting polls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_general_election,_2013

The first thing to note is that all polls before Dix's flip flop showed the Liberals below 30% (27%-29%) while the NDP ranged from 45%-49%. Following Dix's change, Liberal poll numbers climbed from 31 to 41% while the NDP's fell to 38 to 45% (even the Abacus and Angus Reid polls that Christy claims show poll numbers shifting to the NDP show the opposite (possibly internal Liberal polls? but she doesn't specify and therefore making her above claim of a 4 day climb in NDP numbers following the change or maybe she is simply trying to highlight how shrewd she feels she is compared to her advisors).

If we look at the regions, the Angus Reid numbers for Arril 12-13 were: Interior Liberal 32%, NDP 43%  (+11 NDP); Vancouver Island Liberal 19%, NDP 45% (+26% NDP); and Metro Vancouver Liberal 30%, NDP 45% (+15%); North Liberal 19%, NDP 62% (NDP +41%).

The Justason poll of April 15-23 (nearly all before Dix's change but closest available before poll) showed: Interior Liberal 23%, NDP 41  (+18 NDP); Vancouver Island Liberal 12%, NDP 49% (+37% NDP); and Metro Vancouver Liberal 33%, NDP 56% (+23%).

I chose the two Forum polls following Dix's change (because the first was the first following the four days that Christy claims the NDP was still growing following the change [Forum did none before the change] and the second because it came closer to the actual election results) plus a May 12 Angus Reid poll since it was close to election day (May 14) and could be compared to the Angus Reid April 12-13 poll before Dix's change. I couldn't find the actual regional election numbers. 

The Forum poll of April 30 reported: Interior Liberal 37%, NDP 29  (+8 Liberal); Vancouver Island Liberal 33%, NDP 39% (+7% NDP); and Metro Vancouver Liberal 43%, NDP 44% (+1%).

The Forum poll of May 8 reported: Interior Liberal 52%, NDP 32  (+20 Liberal); Vancouver Island Liberal 32%, NDP 49% (+17% NDP); and Metro Vancouver Liberal 41%, NDP 44% (+3% NDP).

The Angus Reid numbers for May 12-13 were: Interior Liberal 39%, NDP 37%  (+2 Liberal); Vancouver Island Liberal 28%, NDP 46% (+18% NDP); and Metro Vancouver Liberal 38%, NDP 45% (+7% NDP); and North Liberal 39%, NDP 52% (NDP +13%).

The decline in NDP support from before to after the change in Dix's position is clear in all regions, even taking into account polling error. However, because the NDP lead before the Dix change was much smaller (11 to 18%) in the Interior, it meant that a large shift in the Interior would give a the Liberals the lead in the Interior, unlike the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island. The Forum polls also show this lead growing between April 30th and May 8th which is what one would expect if the Liberal focus on LNG and other Interior-oriented projects were gaining votes. The near sweep of the Interior ridings is what gave the Liberals their victory. The changing polling numbers over the course of the election do not contradict my hypothesis. One can certainly quarrel with the overall accuracy of the polls and one certainly can do a much more thorough analysis of the results. Other theories do exist but IMO none are as plausable. However, as always beauty is in the eye of the beholder. 

Furthermore, this viewpoint is not necessarily right-wing as you allege. The Liberals, as in most elections everywhere, are unlikely to lose the next election if the economy is doing well, regardless of whether this has anything to do with LNG and other pipelines. However, if the LNG fantasy does fail, as I have discussed is likely above, the NDP will still need an economic plan that BCers will buy, especially if they are going to win enough seats in the Interior to form the government. As I already noted in posts above, there has been an enormous shift towards renewable energy investment globally, so much so that gobal spending on renewable energy has been greater than fossil fuel investment since 2010 and the difference in investment levels is growing. In other words, we are in danger of becoming a buggy whip industry type country over the next few decades if we continue our almost total focus on fossil fuel growth. Canada was ranked dead last among OECD countries in dealing with climate change.

The party needs to start shifting in this direction both for economic and ecological reasons. If it does not it is in danger of losing votes to the Greens over environmental issues while failing to win those who prefer a fossil fuel agenda, because they already have the Liberal and Conservative parties to choose from for that agenda. In other words, my viewpoint is far from right-wing. However, having lived in the Interior, I strongly believe that an economic agenda that does not address the employment concerns of these people in what are often one-industry towns and in communities which often have nearby ghost towns to remind them what can happen to their community, will never win most of these ridings over. The agenda does not have to be a fossil fuel agenda, or the one I suggested, but it has to be one that seems like  having a good chance of working.

KenS wrote:

What Krop said in the last paparagraph. And even if its put very different, I think jerrym is saying the same.

 

You're right Ken. 

Krop, with regard to the Okanagan, the NDP have won in the northernmost part of the region (Okanagan North, as well as in the Shuswap) and in the southernmost part (Okanagan Boundary) so I would not write off the region. Afterall, Obama won two elections in part because he went after the southern states, many of which the Democrats hadn't won since Johnson introduced civil rights legislation. Now even more southern states are shifting demographically towards the Democrats as the population changes. 

ETA: I left out the even more obvious example of Jack Layton's decision to go after Quebec ridings when more than 70 years of doing so by the CCF/NDP had led to not a single victory in a federal election (they won once in a byelection) and where the NDP had sometimes got even fewer votes than the Rhino Party with "their so-called primal promise, was 'a promise to keep none of our promises'. They then promised outlandishly impossible schemes designed to amuse and entertain the voting public." If Layton had simply given up saying winning there was impossible, 0% of the current NDP caucus would be from Quebec instead of 60%. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros_Party_of_Canada_(1963–93)

I think the BC NDP needs to stop being run by people like Moe Sihota. It needs a platform that speaks to the bottom 80% of wage earners. It needs programs to enhance regional employment by retrofitting and subsidies for small innovative companies that hire and retain Canadian workers.  It needs to at minimum double if not triple the rate for disabled people in this province. It needs to start funding education to provide the support staff our children need. It needs to build long term residences for seniors. It needs a higher minimum wage and lots of new officers to enforce what little employment standards that are left. All those things will provide employment throughout the province not just in selected areas.

Instead the NDP promised to do almost nothng for poor people and that they would balance the books before they did anything else of significance.  I can't for the life of me think of why they didn't attract new voters.

URGENT! This is a new story that is developing right now: The community of Moricetown Band is about to sign an agreement with Pacific Trail Pipelines under their First Nations Limited Partnership group. The agreement is set to be signed this weekend in Vancouver. The reason they want to sign this agreement in Vancouver is because an overwhelming amount of community members showed up at the last community meeting and voiced their opposition to having any pipelines come through our lands. The agreement gives the Moricetown Band & PTP the rights (via approval from the BC gov't) to set up a gate at our camp and manage traffic coming into this territory. The community of Moricetown Band has NO JURISDICTION outside of their Indian Reservations. They are puppets and have been oppressed by the Federal Government under the INDIAN ACT since contact. They have suffered severe budgetary cutbacks for many decades now and have been prepped by racist poverty policies into this desperate situation. One of the clauses in the agreement also state that PTP cannot sell their pipeline to any parties interested in transporting Tar Sands Bitumen for 5 years. (READ THAT AGAIN) The Delgamuukw Court case is the reason why government and industry are attempting to consult but they are choosing to consult with parties who they have oppressed into survival mode which is less than what most understand as third world living conditions. We believe that if they sign this agreement - it will initiate processes within the BC government, the Federal government, and their security forces to move in and attempt enforcing the agreement. This may lead up to a raid... The plaintiffs in the Supreme Court of Canada's Delgamuukw Court Case are the Hereditary Chiefs and their members. There is no mention anywhere in that court case that Indian Act Bands have decision making powers.

https://www.facebook.com/unistoten

jerrym

..i will post what i find around this. there were no announcements (as yet) with the post on facebook.

Is there a link somewhere that discusses dissent within other individual First Nations [besides Unist’ot’en] along the the route where the Indian Act Band councils, and in some cases the heridtary chiefs, have signed onto, or allegedly signed onto the pipeline partnership? [Sometimes it is hard to tell even who has actually signed on.]

And/or do dissenters from those other First Nations tend primarily to voice their dissent by coming to the Unist’ot’en camp?

It's good to put that distinction out there.

But the pipeline partnership claims to have support of heritary chiefs as well. I'm not asking to get into what is really true about claims and counter-claims.... I'm just recognizing that at least in some cases hereditary chiefs are going along. Its obviously very complicated, and the history of colonialism makes it no surprise that the consequnces play out on a lot of levels.

Leaving aside sorting all that out- which I suspect you have to be there to have an idea, and then it changes... leaving all that aside, we know that a certain number of the First Nations are going along with the pipeline. In some cases that even includes some hereditary chiefs.

So my question was about dissenters in other First Nations along the route- what do they do when they dont have something to rally around in their own communities that is even remotely like the Unist’ot’en camp? It must be tough.

Premier's LNG plans in trouble as major investor out of Kitmat LNG project

The news comes only one month after Premier Christy Clark took a tour of the Kitimat site to promote the LNG industry.

The future of a major LNG project in Kitimat has been thrown into uncertainty, after one of its main backers has decided to walk out. Houston-based Apache Corporation says it will leave Kitimat LNG, which was a joint project with Chevron. 

"Consistent with the company's ongoing repositioning for profitable and repeatable North American onshore growth, Apache intends to completely exit the Wheatstone and Kitimat LNG projects," the company announced today in its second quarter report.

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/premiers-lng-plans-trouble-major-i...

I see the Apache thing a bit different. Partners come and go in these consortia. Apache getting out is not really a decisive blow, to the project, or to the Premeir's fantasies fro the public.

Its more in the nature of just another step in the march of the unraveling. Which INO is not yet to be realistically labeled as 'inevitable unraveling'.

These 2 or 3 projects that have recently been announced that would be in partnership with West Coast Vancouver Island First Nations- how is the gas supposed to get there anyway?

I can see that the distance of new pipeline build is less if it takes off from existing Lower Mainland pipelines. But it would have to first head north to use smaller islands to get from the Mainland Coast, or go more directly across under Georgia Straight. Less sensitive territory than the long peipelines that would have to be built to Kitimat or Rupert. and not quite as risky routes for the tankers. But still, no slam dunks in there.

Presumably, thats where the Howe Sound proposal comes from- traversing the least possible sensitive territory. Good luck with getting it through where lots of wealthy people live, and the median incomes are so high.