The Terrace Daily is an excellent, no holds barred, website that has recently been all over BC's LNG boondoggle. The article titled 'BC's LNG Corporate Welfare Scheme' is a must read for every BC resident because it exposes so clearly the financial lies being told by Christy Clark's government about the LNG 'windfall' that is in reality another stinky pile of capitalist bullshit being perfumed by lies so that, like the sale of BC Rail, IPP, raw log exports and so many other piles of capitalist crap, it passes the smell test temporarily. Unfortunately the BC NDP seems suffer from anosmia as they too support the fracking-LNG-pipeline-Site C boondoggle.As the Terrace Daily says, "BC's LNG scheme is a welfare industry on steroids". The LNG industry in Australia has taken the industry bait that has resulted a huge LNG cost blowout with estimated costs to build the facilities needed at $150 billion now expected to double. The Aussie boondoggle reeks of an investment binge based on massive over-investment, hugely inflated asset prices, cheap finance on faulty ROI assumptions, labour market distortions on irrational expectations. The Australian Government will probably never get back their investment of public tax dollars let alone see the 'windfall' they promised their citizens.
In reality, as another Terrace Daily article says, "Natural Gas deposits are everywhere, China itself has a 300 year domestic supply, Russia is awash in natural gas in Siberia, a new pipeline from Kazakhstan directly into eastern China has just been completed, this gas line is advertised to supply natural gas to 600 million Chinese people alone, that is almost half of China`s population, the natural gas supplier for that pipeline is Kazakhstan and Russia, Canadian gas will never flow through that pipeline(s) system and spur lines......Why is that point important? It`s important because 50% of the Chinese market for our gas is already gone."
At the same time BC's MSM is awash in bullshit claims of streets paved with the $trillions of LNG dollars and jobs-jobs-jobs. Behind the scenes it's tax breaks, subsidies, capital write-offs and bribery going on. If the LNG industry is so damned profitable why won’t they build it on their own dime? Why do corporations like Apache, Chevron, Shell, EnCana and Nexen want to be re-classified as a manufacturing industry so they can write off all provincial taxes plus a 30%?.
The reason that BC's wildly 'profitable' LNG industry isn't actually going for it is because the world is awash in Natural Gas and finding countries to sign long-term energy buying contracts is impossible, there are no buyers. One corporation, Cheniere energy in the USA, has signed long-term energy buying contracts with Asia, at about 1/3 of BC's proposed selling price. At $6 dollars per unit, the price BC must get to be viable, BC won't be able to sell its LNG to Asia or anywhere. The project will never make money or even pay back all the initial subsidies, let alone supply BC Governments substantial revenues.
Finally, for today, there's the issue of a cheap supply electrical energy, LNG exporters require massive amounts of electricity to freeze natural gas, BC's LNG producers won't, like others already do, use their own gas to generate electricity, they want Site-C dam built and they want IPP's expensive power, they want this expensive power for virtually free because they say it's the only way they can compete with other countries. Sure smells like bullshit to me!
