So which LNG plants will be going ahead and in what order in BC 2

Enbridge to restart 2nd natural gas pipeline after explosion near Prince George

https://globalnews.ca/news/4535905/enbridge-restart-gas-line-pipeline-ex...

https://www.straight.com/news/1149196/fortisbc-asks-bc-customers-continu...

Martin N. wrote:

Ah, the righteous outrage of a keyboard warrior whose only contribution to environmental concerns is.....righteous outrage.

Go fuck yourself you asshole. Just because I post here does not mean I do nothing, just because my views are not neoliberal doesn't mean I do nothing.

You support the petroligarchy's right to run our planet. That makes you a fascist wannabe not a global saviour.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Martin N. wrote:

Uh, no.

Ah, the righteous outrage of a keyboard warrior whose only contribution to environmental concerns is.....righteous outrage.

Go fuck yourself you asshole. Just because I post here does not mean I do nothing, just because my views are not neoliberal doesn't mean I do nothing.

You support the petroligarchy's right to run our planet. That makes you a fascist wannabe not a global saviour.

Uh, no. I support our democratic institutions and their ability to fund government programs. I do not support lawbreakers who consider their own opinions reason enough to break laws they do not agree with : anarchy.

Perhaps you can do something about the empty rabble kitty? That will really be 'doing something'. Thank you in advance and peace be unto you, angry old white guy.

Everything outside of the orthodoxy preached here is considered 'trolling'. I ask awkward questions, sure, but that doesnt make me a troll. Its just that I'm interested in solutions, not banging on about the scope of the problem and the associated blame game.

I love babble too. I read much more than comment but have a lot of questions that are never answered. I am pleased to contribute and hope your grocery cart is soon overflowing with donations to convert into cash for rabble. No bottle left behind!

B.C. grants fracking company free pass to build illegal dams

In a decision without precedent in its 25 years of existence, British Columbia’s Environmental Assessment Office has told Progress Energy that two massive unauthorized dams that it built will not have to undergo environmental assessments.

The decision comes after the company made an audacious request to the Environmental Assessment Office to have the two dams declared retroactively exempt from review — a request that was quietly granted by the province’s self-described neutral environmental regulator on July 17.

The exemption means Progress Energy is spared having the controversial dams subject to costly, public and potentially embarrassing reviews. The dams are described as “illegal works” in documents released by the Environmental Assessment Office in response to a Freedom of Information request from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).

The office’s decision is the latest development in a saga that came to light in May 2017, when the CCPA first reported on the existence of “dozens” of unlicensed dams. Many of the dams had been built by Progress Energy Canada Ltd., the Calgary-based subsidiary of Malaysian state-owned petro giant Petronas, a major player in B.C.’s fracking industry.

The office’s decision is the latest development in a saga that came to light in May 2017, when the CCPA first reported on the existence of “dozens” of unlicensed dams. Many of the dams had been built by Progress Energy Canada Ltd., the Calgary-based subsidiary of Malaysian state-owned petro giant Petronas, a major player in B.C.’s fracking industry.

Had the Environmental Assessment Office rejected Progress’s request, the company would almost certainly have faced questions about the numerous other dams that it built without permits and that were later found to have serious structural problems.

Full environmental assessments would also have likely shone a critical light on how B.C.’s energy industry regulator, the Oil and Gas Commission, allowed all the dams to be built in the first place.

Exemption ‘fuels public distrust’

Green Party MLA Sonia Furstenau says the Environmental Assessment Office’s decision to grant Progress’s extraordinary request fuels public distrust of the relationship between government and the powerful industries it regulates.

“Progress Energy being granted retroactive exemption is an example of how trust gets eroded,” Furstenau said. “People want to see companies and industry being held to account and to see rules being followed and enforced.”

“We have a long way to go to resolve this,” Furstenau said, adding:

“A revised EA [environmental assessment process] will help, reform of professional reliance will help, but we also need enforcement and monitoring, and we need far more transparency and accountability.”

In granting the exemptions — albeit with some conditions attached — the Environmental Assessment Office partially closes the file on one of the most extraordinary applications ever brought before it.

Avoiding the “F” word: How “natural” is Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)?

In October, the B.C. government celebrated a decision by private-sector investors to proceed with LNG Canada, a $40 billion infrastructure project in Kitimat to export “natural” gas. Yet somehow much of the media coverage neglects to mention that this gas is extracted by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which is now the primary method for natural gas production in Canada. Why are so many media and government announcements studiously avoiding the “F” word?

There is nothing natural about fracking, which involves drilling a shaft up to four kilometres down into rock, then several more horizontally for up to three more kilometres. Large amounts of water, sand and chemicals are injected under high pressure into the rock, cracking and fissuring it to release gas deposits. During its lifetime, each fracking well consumes more than 90 million litres of clean water - the volume of 36 Olympic-size swimming pools. In fact, in parts of the United States drinking-water wells have dried up due to withdrawals for fracking....

Margaret Mcgregor, MD, CCFP, MHSc

Member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment

Melissa Lem, MD, CCFP, FCFP

Board Member, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment

Dr Courtney Howard, MD, CCFP-EM

Emergency Physician, Yellowknife, NT

President, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment

First Author on the Lancet Countdown 2017 Report: Briefing for Canadian Policymakers

The problem with exempting major projects from environmental assessment

When a public regulator repeatedly makes major decisions that favour corporate interests — quietly and behind closed doors — we have a problem.

British Columbia’s Environmental Assessment Office bills itself as a “neutral” provincial agency.

But there is evidence that this is not the case, and that B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman needs to make serious reforms — beyond what was recently announced in his revitalization of the province’s environmental assessment law.

On numerous occasions under B.C.’s environmental assessment regime, corporations close to the government have received favourable rulings from the regulator.

Citizens may conclude that the Environmental Assessment Office is captured by the very companies it regulates — companies that have, in some cases, made handsome political donations to British Columbia’s two major political parties.

quote:

Those rulings involved not one, not two, but three gas plants that Encana proposed to build near the community of Dawson Creek. One of them was the largest of its kind built in Western Canada in the past 30 years.

To be clear, none of these were minor facilities.

They all qualified as “major” projects under the Environmental Assessment Act’s regulations, and therefore should have been “reviewable.”

In each case, Encana asked the Environmental Assessment Office to exempt the gas plants from lengthy environmental assessments that would have required public notification and consultation.

And in each case, the office granted the company’s request without first notifying the public.

The company was thus spared the expense of having its projects subject to more transparent public environmental screenings.

quote:

This is a problem for people concerned with a lack of transparency and public input into major projects.

The Environmental Assessment Act grants the office powers to exempt reviewable projects from assessments. When and how such calls are made, however, is often completely shielded from public scrutiny until after the fact.

That’s what happened in the three Encana cases. And that is precisely what Environment Minister Heyman should fix if his revitalization efforts are to have a lasting, positive impact.

First Nation leaders and prominent environmental lawyers all recently told Heyman and/or key officials in his ministry that the assessment office’s powers to exempt major projects should be scrapped.

Industry-hired experts downplay impacts of major projects: UBC study

When experts, such as engineers and geoscientists, submit reports on a project to B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office, the generally accepted idea is that their information will reflect environmental standards and identify problems, allowing a project design to be changed or rejected if necessary.

But, that is not what happens in B.C. according to a study by University of British Columbia researchers that looked at 10 recent environmental impact assessments.

Researchers found that experts — usually hired by a company applying to build a mine, pipeline or other project — rarely stick to generally accepted thresholds to determine if there is an environmental or health concern.

The study also found when impacts are likely to exceed established criteria — push past those accepted thresholds — experts find a variety of innovative ways to minimize potential problems.

Experts using ‘scorched earth reasoning’

Gerald Gurinder Singh, UBC senior research fellow in the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, said the paper shows biases and unscientific practices used in the environmental assessment process and underlines the need to balance evidence given by industry-paid experts.

“If an environmental impact, such as the release of pollutants which have human health consequences, is predicted to surpass a threshold of concern for human health, we would expect that that impact would be considered important or significant,” said Singh, co-author of the B.C. study and a second paper looking at scientific shortcomings in international environmental assessments.

The study found that, instead of flagging problems, the experts — who have an interest in ensuring the project goes through without expensive changes or mitigation measures — minimize the significance of impacts, even when they are likely to exceed set environmental thresholds, he said.

Common strategies include referring to less strict criteria used in other jurisdictions or claiming that modelling uncertainties could mean problems are unlikely, Singh told The Narwhal.

quote:

New rules leave room for bias

Regulations will be introduced over the next few months, with the Act coming into effect next fall.

There is cautious approval of some measures, such as speeding up the process by ensuring potential hurdles are identified early, consideration of climate change and involvement of Indigenous communities throughout the process.

But there is already concern that the new legislation does not go far enough to ensure scientific independence and rigour.

The UBC study, which was published before the legislation was passed, adds fuel to that fire.

A letter to Premier John Horgan, signed by more than 180 university academics and science professionals, says the new legislation fails to fix fundamental flaws.

“We are concerned that the proposed process lacks scientific rigour, with significant consequences for the health and environment of all British Columbians,” says the letter.

“The continued lack of scientific independence, peer review and transparency in the evaluation of a given project’s risk to the environment will serve only to further undermine public confidence.”

A major concern of the scientists is that the new legislation still allows project proponents to collect and present the evidence for environmental assessments — the same problem identified by the UBC study.

“The information required to assess environmental risk would continue to be gathered and analyzed by those with a vested interest in project approval,” says the letter.

“This lack of independence can create a culture susceptible to biased data collection or interpretation and will continue to erode the public’s trust in a process that they expect to be fair and evidence-based.”

Jim Pojar, one of the letter’s signatories and former B.C. government ecologist, said the Pacific Northwest LNG project in the Skeena estuary demonstrates why project assessments should be based on information gathered and analyzed by independent experts — who don’t have a horse in the race.....

LNG Canada partner Petronas cuts natural gas output due to plunging prices

Natural gas prices in Western Canada are so low that a partner in the country's first LNG export project is shutting off money-losing wells and throttling back its exploration program.

Malaysian-owned Petronas, which has a 25 per cent interest in the $40-billion LNG Canada project, has been curtailing production by between 50 and 200 million cubic feet per day from wells in northeastern B.C. capable of producing 700 million cf/d, the CEO of its Canadian branch says.

The practice is one being adopted by a growing number of western Canadian producers to avoid selling their natural gas at prices that often don't even cover the cost of pipeline transportation.

"We talk a lot about oil infrastructure," said CEO Mark Fitzgerald of Petronas Energy Canada Ltd. in an interview, referring to oil price discounts in Western Canada blamed on full crude pipelines.

"Gas is trapped as well and if you compare the prices that Canadian gas producers are receiving against our U.S. peers, the differentials are significant and costing us a significant amount of money."

Only running 1 rig

The company invested heavily in natural gas exploration in northeastern B.C. from 2012 to 2016, employing more than 25 drilling rigs at peak times to prove the resource potential as part of its longer-term plan to build a liquefied natural gas export terminal.

It is running only one rig now, Fitzgerald said.

Petronas backed out of its $36-billion Pacific NorthWest LNG project in 2017, but joined the LNG Canada partnership led by Royal Dutch Shell last May.

The partners agreed to go ahead with their project this fall, but it isn't expected to be ready to begin supercooling natural gas and shipping it out until late 2023 or early 2024....

..i was recently reading that lng is quickly coming to and end and then it will be all lfg. right now there is both and hopefully the reporting language will change once those lines become more clear.

Actually these dollar estimates are a joke. The oil industry will never ever clean it all up. Anyone who thinks otherwise is dreaming in technicolour. The way that corporations make money is by socializing the environmental risk. To bad about the Albertan landscape but they pissed away all the oil money and I sure as fuck don't want to clean up after the oil oligarchy.

Provincial report proves fracking not worth the risk

Scientists reporting to the provincial government have found major gaps in research and monitoring of fracking operations in the province’s northeast. They confirm the fears of almost 17,000 British Columbians who signed a petition calling on the B.C. government to ban fracking in the province weeks ago. 

“This bombshell report confirms the need to halt all fracking in B.C. now,” said Climate Campaigner Peter McCartney for the Wilderness Committee. “Not only does it reveal a shocking lack of knowledge and transparency around the industry, but it also shows the alarming risks to our water, health and climate.”

In the report, the panel confirms the risk of gas and toxic chemicals escaping drilling sites, tailings ponds and old wells into local waterways and the atmosphere. It also finds the environmental impacts of huge water withdrawals from fracking are unknown and that the province doesn’t even know how much water the industry is using. 

“It’s clear fracking operations in B.C. operate with little provincial oversight or public scrutiny,” said McCartney. “When you’re dealing with thousands of wells across the landscape, quite likely poisoning nearby communities and ecosystems, that’s a horrifying thought.”

The report comes as B.C. faces the construction of two new liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants, Woodfibre and LNG Canada, that would require around 9,000 new fracking wells in the northeast.

“We hardly understand the consequences of our current industry yet the government supports a massive expansion of this destructive process?” said McCartney. “These projects should never have been green-lighted without knowing the enormous risks.”....