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BC premier in juggling act over LNG Canada
Must persuade Green Party, environmentalists, that project fits with goals to reduce carbon emissions; Greens won’t vote to support Gary Park for Petroleum News
The British Columbia government has reacted with almost giddy delight to the formal launching of construction on the Shell-led LNG Canada project.
Premier John Horgan, who once ridiculed talk by former Premier Christy Clark of 20 LNG ventures in British Columbia, now ranks LNG Canada on the same historic scale as a “moon landing.”
On the surface, the final investment decision by Shell and its four Asian partners opens the door to a windfall C$40 billion of capital spending, resulting in 10,000 construction jobs, even if thousands of them are filled by foreign workers being flown to the job site.
But Horgan is now faced with a challenge to persuade the Green Party and environmentalists that LNG Canada will not overturn his climate change pledges.
First, he has to reconcile carbon emissions from the project with British Columbia’s legislated target for reducing the province’s overall emissions to 40 percent below 2015 levels by 30 percent.
The test will come this fall when the government is supposed to release a revised climate plan to get the province 75 percent on the way to its target, allowing it to release a second-phase strategy in 2019 to eliminate the remaining 25 percent.
The overall plan will take into account the emissions associated with LNG Canada, estimated at 3.5 million metric tons a year or almost 10 percent of the total volume of emissions to be eliminated, if B.C. is to have any hope of lowering its emissions to 13 million metric tons a year by its eventual goal in 2050, given that releases from LNG Canada’s most ambitious plans could be 8.6 million metric tons a year.
Green Party issues For many, especially Andrew Weaver, leader of the B.C. Green Party and a climate-scientist-turned-politician, the government’s goals are far-fetched and could only be achieved through vast sacrifices in other sectors of the economy.
The dilemma for Weaver is to choose between defending his party’s very existence based on its insistence that the planet is in peril, while using the three legislators it has in the B.C. legislature to ensure the Horgan government remains in power.
Horgan believes he may have an answer by pondering ways to use cabinet orders to implement all of the taxes and relief for LNG Canada and avoiding a vote in the legislature that could topple his administration.
In March, his government promised LNG Canada tax breaks of C$5.3 billion, including exempting the project from planned increases in British Columbia’s carbon tax and exempting construction from the provincial sales tax.
Weaver said the Greens will not vote to support the LNG sector, but hopes Horgan will achieve his objectives without any surprises and in good faith.
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