photo: Tina Lovgreen / BCIT Commons
Read this July 29 editorial by renowned BC political commentator Keith Baldrey in the Surrey Now on the fairytale that is Christy Clark’s LNG vision.
Not a week goes by, it seems, that Premier Christy Clark doesn’t talk, yet again, about the vast riches that lay in B.C.’s path if only a liquefied natural gas industry gets off the ground in this province.
It’s a theme that began before the last election, and one that helped carry her to a surprising victory with the voters. People seem to at least want to believe the fairy talelike talk about billions of dollars coming our way to help eliminate the provincial debt and even the sales tax.
But for all the time the premier spends talking about this subject, more evidence turns up that reminds us all about just what a shaky roll of the dice the whole LNG gambit may prove to be.
Clark is arguing that the glut of natural gas on North American markets has kept the price low, and therefore B.C. must look to other markets to make money. China, Korea and Japan all loom as potential customers of B.C.’s LNG.
To be fair, she has a point here. The steady decline in the price of natural gas in North America has meant dwindling revenues to the provincial treasury arising from royalties on gas sales, and this has been going on for several years.
Annual natural gas royalty revenues for the B.C. government peaked in 2005-06 at almost a whopping $2 billion. Back then, the price was a lofty $7.27 per gigajoule, but things have gone downhill ever since, as the shale gas revolution in the United States exploded.
The revenues bottomed out at a measly $169 million in 2012-13 and are expected to hit nearly a half-billion dollars or so this year, but the days of royalties generating more than a billion dollars per year appear over.
And even the current estimate for this year’s revenues may be in jeopardy of being too high. Prices are lagging behind predictions of a few months ago, and even a 50 cent change in the price from what was predicted equals about $140 million in lost revenue.
READ MORE: http://www.thenownewspaper.com/baldrey-don-t-believe-b-c-premier-christy-clark-s-lng-fairytale-1.1265390
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