BC Premier David Eby just said 'yes' to a pipeline across the northern part of the province, to bring gas to the proposed KsiLisims LNG plant slated for Nisga’s territory in northwest BC. .What just happened here? Eby is supposed to be a militant climate control enthusiast with a passionate distaste for all things hydrocarbon.Well, travel broadens the mind, it seems.Mr. Eby has been spending time in Korea, Japan and Malaysia.... places that don't have a homegrown energy industry. And he concluded that for BC gas exports, there was a business case after all. And so, when the Nisga’s nation made substantial improvements to an existing right of way, he signed off on it..But maybe it wasn’t so unexpected?“I think BC has been moving along a spectrum of opinion on this,” says Shannon Joseph, Chair of Energy for a Secure Future, an organization dedicated to increasing aboriginal involvement in the energy industry.“Once upon a time Eby would never talk about LNG, but now he’s had a couple of trips to Asia and he realizes these countries were dependent upon places like Russia for natural gas, with all the risks that went with that, and now he’s allowed this pipeline, which is actually a significant size and will move as much product as Phase 1 of the Coastal GasLink pipeline which is supplying LNG Canada at Kitimat.”(CGL will be shipping product in a few weeks, and will also eventually supply Phase II of LNG Canada and also the smaller Cedar LNG project, in which indigenous people have a majority ownership stake.)So, is this the start of something big?Maybe. But we need ‘policy coherence.’Joseph: “That this project is going to move ahead is very good news for that other project in BC taking place, and for Canada. And this has started to move the political needle. But we need policy coherence. It’s great to have this extra pipeline capacity but we still have an emissions cap, and that is going to make it hard for those people to fill up to capacity.”A job then, for Prime Minister Mark Carney. But will he do it?See the full interview on Hannaford, which airs at 7:00pm tonight.
