FLETCHER: Politicians rush to the front of the LNG parade

Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.VICTORIA — Moments after the long-expected decision by five global energy corporations to proceed with phase two of LNG Canada’s natural gas export terminal at Kitimat, BC. NDP leader David Eby’s campaign trumpeted the achievement.“David Eby secures largest private sector investment in Canadian history,” the press release headline declared, in perhaps the boldest assertion of the snap election campaign so far.As someone who followed the development of this industry from its early stages, I have to place this Eby moment right up there with his recent claim that BC needs an election two years early to create a border “firebreak” against Donald Trump and his alleged accomplices in the BC Conservative Party. There appear to be people out there who are actually prepared to believe this stuff.LNG Canada phase one used to be the biggest private sector investment in Canadian history, a fact often stated by former prime minister Justin Trudeau. With the pipeline built and the Kitimat site loading LNG ships, phase two will require five more compressor stations to double the Coastal GasLink pipeline capacity, and two more refrigeration and compression “trains,” powered by burning natural gas as per the global standard for efficiency.The claim of the biggest private investment in Canadian history now rests with the expanded Bell AI Fabric data centre near Regina, budgeted at $52 billion. LNG Canada phase one came in at around $40 billion, and phase two is estimated at $30 billion..I was there in 2013 when Stephen Harper’s natural resources minister, Joe Oliver, attended one of then-premier Christy Clark’s LNG conferences in Vancouver to announce he had issued the biggest export licence in Canadian history, to ship LNG from BC’s north coast. He was joined by then-Haisla Nation chief councillor Ellis Ross, who pioneered the idea and now serves as the Conservative MP for the region.Granted, the NDP government of John Horgan deserves a share of the credit. By 2017, when Clark’s BC Liberal government fell to an NDP-Green coalition, Malaysian giant Petronas had cancelled its plan for Pacific Northwest LNG at Lelu Island near Prince Rupert.Petronas cited market conditions, which by then included Clark’s ill-fated LNG income tax, which she vowed would allow the province to pay off its debt and cancel individual income tax. Horgan took over, scrapped the LNG income tax, and gave LNG Canada further investment tax and power rate breaks, over the objections of some in his own caucus as well as the BC Greens. This closed the deal with Petronas, by then a 25% investor in LNG Canada at Kitimat, with project leader Shell (40%), PetroChina and Mitsubishi of Japan (15% each), and Korea Gas (5%).BC Conservative Leader Lorne Doerkson tried to pre-empt the LNG Canada announcement a day early, promising to double and then triple LNG exports in the years ahead with their own “energy superpower” plan.Eby’s team fired back at the BC Conservative claim that more than a dozen early LNG projects failed because the NDP has an “ideological disposition against BC LNG.” The claim is “absurd,” wrote one prominent local columnist, but is it?.Consider BC attorney general and deputy premier Niki Sharma. Her job before being elected to a safe NDP seat in Vancouver was vice-chair of the board of directors for Stand.Earth, the San Francisco-based environmental group formerly known as ForestEthics. Sharma’s job was “senior oil and gas campaigner” of the organization famous for describing Alberta’s oil sands as “Mordor.”Speaking of Alberta, former premier Jason Kenney recalled in an X post this week what the late Horgan told him during LNG and oil pipeline struggles: “John Horgan once told me he had to manage ‘two green parties — the actual Green Party and the greens in my own caucus.’”This faction is what is now referred to as the “mud hut wing” of the NDP, the folks who find a way to oppose any resource development, based on magical ideas of a solar- and wind-powered future and the dismantling or transfer of industry in a surrender of the province to indigenous people.Tom Fletcher has covered BC politics and business as a journalist since 1984.tomfletcherbc@gmail.comX: @tomfletcherbc

FLETCHER: Politicians rush to the front of the LNG parade

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