This article originally appeared on The Tyee.

Politicians who advocate for more bitumen pipelines and LNG exports are making a "have your cake and eat it too argument" because there is no way Canada can meet its climate change commitments under such a scenario says David Hughes, one of the nation's top energy experts.

Even building just one LNG terminal coupled with modest oilsands growth would increase oil and gas emissions from 26 per cent of Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions in 2014 to 45 per cent by 2030.

Under such a scenario, as forecasted by the National Energy Board, the rest of the economy would be forced to contract its emissions by 47 per cent in order to meet promised greenhouse gas reduction targets set by the Paris talks.

"This level of reduction is near-impossible without severe economic consequences," concluded Hughes in a new report for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).

In other words the cheapest and most sensible approach to reducing greenhouse gases from current 732 megatonnes to a 2020 target of 620 megatonnes involves shrinking the oil and gas industry by limiting bitumen extraction, and not building more pipelines.

Canada's politicians need to "rethink the expansion of oil and gas production if we are going to be serious about meeting our Paris commitments," Hughes told The Tyee.

"Canada still needs oil and gas and it is more than self-sufficient in satisfying its own requirements. But ramping up exports is not an economic winner when you consider climate change and oil revenue in general. We need a long-term plan as opposed to short term hell-bent growth that damns the consequences."

Author's Decades of Expertise

Hughes, an energy analyst and earth scientist with a public record of high reliability, worked for 32 years for the federal government and headed research on unconventional gas and coal for the Natural Resources Canada until he retired in 2008.

Since then his independent reports, which have challenged industry and government hubris on a number of energy matters, are often quoted in publications as varied as Nature, The Economist, the Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg, USA Today and The Tyee.

His latest number crunching report not only answers the question "Can Canada Expand Oil and Gas Production, Build Pipelines and Keep Its Climate Change Commitments?" with a clear no but does so with public data available from the National Energy Board and Environment Canada.

Independent energy analyst with 32 years experience working for the fed gov has wake up call for #Canada https://t.co/jkYtXC2wns #cdnpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) June 7, 2016

In recent months Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and former federal natural resources minister Joe Oliver have all advocated for more bitumen export pipelines, while British Columbia premier Christy Clark has lauded the benefits of B.C.'s LNG projects and natural gas pipelines from fracking operations in northern B.C.

But based on data provided by the National Energy Board and Environment Canada Hughes found that there was no way that Canada could build more pipelines and meet promised global reductions in greenhouse gases.

"Nobody seems to be doing the math and that's why I did the report to put the numbers together."

Need for Pipelines Challenged

Hughes also found that no new pipelines are actually needed if Alberta keeps its promise to cap oilsand growth and emissions at 100 megatons a year. The energy-intensive mining project, Canada's largest single source of emissions, now emits 68 million tons a year.

Source: CCPA

Hughes argues that there is enough existing pipeline and rail capacity to handle a 45 per cent ramp up in the oilsands production. "The additional pipelines being lobbied for by industry and governments are therefore not necessary."

Hughes also debunks the myth that getting bitumen to tidewater ports will somehow increase the global price that Canada's gets for its low-grade bitumen.

For years now pipeline advocates have argued that getting cheap bitumen or heavy oil to eastern refineries would be highly profitable due to the price difference between West Texas Intermediate, the North American benchmark and North Sea Brent, the global benchmark for oil.

But in the last two years that difference has largely disappeared with the completion of U.S. pipelines to Gulf Coast refineries combined with the removal of a ban on U.S. raw oil exports. That long-term ban often kept crude oil bottled up on the continent.  

Even the federal government admits that the money rational for an Energy East pipeline, for example, has vastly changed in secret memos obtained by Bloomberg last month:

"The benefits of building the pipeline would be greater if the price between WTI and Brent would be as large as that observed in 2011 and 2012," said a December 10, 2015 document marked secret, reported Bloomberg.

"Bitumen sells at a substantial discount because its heavy, highly viscous nature, and high sulphur content make it more costly to refine," explained Hughes in the report.

"This reality will not change even if large volumes reach tidewater for export, as the difference in price that existed over the past few years between the inter-national benchmark — Brent Crude — and North America's benchmark — West Texas Intermediate (WTI) — which did provide a premium for tidewater access over the past few years, has now been reduced to almost nothing."

"The assertion by politicians that tidewater access enabling overseas exports will somehow confer a significant price premium for Canadian oil is therefore not supported by the facts," noted the report.

Slowing Down Production Advised

Canada currently produces about four million barrels of oil a day but 61 per cent of that volume comes from high cost and carbon intensive mining in the tar sands.

The country exports about nearly three quarters of what it produces to the United States, and primarily as a raw feedstock for U.S. refineries.

Flint Hills Resources, a company owned by the U.S. billionaire Koch brothers, remains one of the largest refiners of raw Canadian bitumen at 320,000 barrels a day.

As Canada exports more raw bitumen south of the border to U.S. refineries, the U.S. has increasingly exported more refined petroleum products to Canada. Annual U.S. exports to Canada have increased from 50,000 barrels a year in 2004 to 200,000 barrels in 2015.

"The widely recited rhetoric that Canada must continue its de facto energy strategy of liquidating its remaining nonrenewable resources as fast as possible to maintain the economy has no credibility," concluded Hughes in his report.

"Canada has never produced more oil, yet government revenues from the industry have collapsed. Yes, prices are low and that is affecting the industry, but nothing can be done about that given that prices are set globally. Maintaining the notion that only ever-expanded exports can rescue the Canadian economy ignores fundamental price realities as well as eliminates any chance that Canada will meet its emission-reduction targets under COP21."

The report echoes many of the conclusions reached by former CIBC economist Jeff Rubin in his recent report on the future of the tar sands. It called pipeline expansion an economic folly.

"As one of the most costly oil sources in the world, the resource is also one of the most vulnerable to plunging oil prices," wrote Rubin.

"Improvement, no matter how impressive, in either its own carbon emissions or in Canada's overall emissions performance, will not remedy that vulnerability in any meaningful sense."

To produce a viable return on investment new bitumen projects require oil prices between $68 and $100 per barrel.

You can click here and read more about B.C. LNG and fracking.

Image: jasonwoodhead23/Flickr

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This article originally appeared on the Vancouver Observer.

Industry Minister James Moore who represents the Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam riding engaged in blatantly false fear mongering last week. He threatened a Lac Mégantic disaster if we don’t accept Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. In order to springboard from a disgusting reliance on a horrific tragedy to reach his ridiculous conclusion, he had to make stuff up.

These are desperate tactics from someone who as an elected Member of Parliament and Minister of the Crown should know better. He said, “The people of Lac Mégantic wished they had pipelines instead of rail.” If Mr. Moore and his Tory government colleagues had done their job, Lac Mégantic would not have happened. 

Instead of acting responsibly, Mr. Moore follows up his toxic logic with a distasteful chaser. “It’s very dangerous for the Lower Mainland … to have the massive spike in rail transfer of dangerous goods,” he said. Moore is reported to have pointed to the huge rail yard in the heart of Port Coquitlam claiming an increasing number of trains are arriving there carrying diluted bitumen crude that has no other way to get to foreign markets.

That’s just not true. There are no facilities on the west coast to transfer crude oil from tank cars to marine shipping vessels. CP spokesperson Jeremy Berry confirmed, “CP does not ship oil along its line to Vancouver for export.”

Mark Hallman, CN’s director of communications and public affairs explained by email that, “CN has never transported crude oil or diluted bitumen to any British Columbia port or terminal for export via ocean-going vessel, and has no plans to do so.”

As for the so-called “massive spike in rail transfer of dangerous goods” there is neither a massive transfer nor a spike. Transport Canada figures of about 5,000 barrels a day relied on by Mr. Moore date back to 2013. CP confirms that, “2014 numbers are lower than 2013.” It is interesting that Mr. Moore would not use recent figures—maybe because they don’t support his false narrative.

Both the Vancouver Sun and Financial Post printed the grossly misleading story (same article different title). 

Mr. Moore is quoted as following up his falsehood about a massive spike in rail transfer with “The people of Port Coquitlam and Burnaby and New Westminster, with dangerous goods going on those rail lines, should be concerned about that.”

If Mr. Moore is concerned about rail transport, he should do everything he can to stop crude transport until its safe, not blackmail Canadians with incineration if we don’t accept pipeline projects.

The truth is it is the Harper government’s unrelenting willingness to cheerlead on behalf of Alberta’s tar sands that is putting us at risk and failing the Canadian economy—including the economic health of our fossil fuel industry.

The Chevron refinery in Burnaby imports a small amount of crude by rail. Chevron began rail-to-truck-to-refinery deliveries in May 2012 and rail-to-refinery deliveries in April 2013 because Chevron couldn’t get enough space on the existing Trans Mountain pipeline—exports took priority over domestic needs.

Crowding out domestic demand is why the relatively small volumes of crude by rail to B.C. have increased since 2011, not because diluted bitumen is seeking foreign markets. But even if Chevron could export all the crude oil it can now receive by rail, it would take more than two months for them to fill an oil tanker. Mr. Moore’s “heavy oil exports to foreign markets” spin doesn’t even make business sense.

Our safety is not threatened by rail transport of heavy oil. Our safety is threatened by the Federal Government’s de-regulation of transport safety. Since 2010 marine safety budgets have been slashed 28 per cent and rail and aviation by more than 20 per cent. Had Transport Canada done its job regulating the rail industry Lac Mégantic would not have happened. 

Our safety is also threatened by the Harper government’s unwillingness to ensure Canadian energy self sufficiency. The oil transported to Lac Mégantic on that fateful night in July 2013 was Bakken crude—a highly flammable light oil imported from New Town, North Dakota destined for the Irving refinery in New Brunswick. More than 40 per cent of the crude oil used in eastern Canada is imported. The public policy answer is to ensure more bitumen is upgraded in Alberta—what Harper promised would happen in 2008 before foreign multinational interests made him change his mind—not build more pipelines.

Oil sands bitumen is dense like tar or wet cement. It requires imported condensate as diluent to move it through a pipeline. If more bitumen were upgraded in Alberta instead of transported as diluted bitumen for upgrading in other countries we would have plenty of pipeline space. 

Barrel for barrel, diluted bitumen requires twice as much pipeline capacity as upgraded bitumen. You need dedicated condensate import pipelines, like Enbridge’s Southern Lights and Kinder Morgan’s Cochin, to bring condensate in, and then you need 30 per cent of the heavy oil pipeline export capacity to re-export condensate as diluent in bitumen. What’s more, diluted bitumen moves 20 per cent slower than light or synthetic crude oil.

Transporting diluted bitumen, even by pipeline, unnecessarily exposes Canadians to a condensate spill. Condensate becomes airborne when released. It’s highly toxic and causes severe respiratory damage. Rail transport of heavy oil requires little or no condensate because oil in rail cars is stationary—the cars move, not the heavy oil.

Mr. Moore was elected to protect his constituent’s interests, not mislead them with erroneous statements and distastefully false arguments. Instead of busying himself inventing boogie men as a front for big oil he should protect the safety and business interests of Canadians—while he still has time.

Robyn Allan is an economist, former president and CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia and qualified expert intervenor in the NEB Trans Mountain Expansion Project Hearings.

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Canada’s premiers have agreed to expand the nation’s developing energy strategy to address climate change and green energy while acknowledging the Alberta oilsands are still an important part of Canada’s economic future.

Endorsing the proposed Canadian Energy Strategy when they met last week at an annual conference on Prince Edward Island, the premiers said in an accompanying document that the plan “will express a renewed vision that describes the kind of energy future that provinces and territories aspire to achieve.”

The premiers added visions and principals included in the plan will allow “provinces and territories to work together, in respect of their own jurisdiction, on energy issues and grow the economy, protect the environment, mitigate climate change, create new opportunities for individuals, organizations and businesses, and enhance the quality of life for all Canadians.”

In a section called “Climate Change and Social and Environmental Responsibility,” the plan included a strategy to address global warming and move towards a lower carbon economy.

The strategy would recognize the importance of environmentally and socially responsible energy development, transportation systems, and enabling technologies to support conservation, efficiency, and effectiveness in the use of energy resources.

And it would allow the nation to “transition to a lower-carbon economy through appropriate initiatives, such as carbon pricing, carbon capture and storage and other technological innovations, while meeting current and future energy needs.”

A related article in The Globe and Mail said the recently-elected premiers of Ontario and Quebec — Kathleen Wynne and Philippe Couillard — suggested they were the driving force behind the strategy’s climate change considerations.

Despite the agreement, Wynne said there will be tensions between provinces that want to achieve progress on climate change, and others eager to boost oil exports.

“I think that is a tension that will continue to exist but the reason it is important to have a Canadian energy strategy is that we’ve got to manage that tension – it exists and we’ve got to deal with the realities of the oil sands, and we’ve got to deal with the realities of transporting that fuel, and we’ve got to deal with the realities of climate change,” she told the Globe and Mail.

The premiers agreed to finalize the strategy before their 2015 summer meeting.

While the proposed energy strategy does not include firm targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Canada, under the Copenhagen Accord, has committed to reducing domestic carbon emissions by 17 per cent from 2005 levels by 2020, a level many analysts say will not be met. A recent report from Environment Canada shows that without stronger emissions reductions Canada will not meet that target.

By way of comparison, the European Union has set three key targets for 2020. These include a 20 per cent reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels; raising the share of the region’s energy consumption produced from renewable resources to 20 per cent; and a 20 per cent improvement in Europe’s energy efficiency.

EU projections indicate the region will comfortably meet its 20 per cent emissions-reduction target by 2020.

Image Credit: Premier of Ontario via Flickr.

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This is a guest post by Mark Jaccard, professor of sustainable energy at Simon Fraser University and a convening lead author in the Global Energy Assessment. 

During B.C.’s 2013 election campaign, at a conference of energy economists in Washington, D.C., I spoke about how one of our politicians was promising huge benefits during the next decades from B.C. liquefied natural gas exports to eastern Asia. These benefits included lower income taxes, zero provincial debt, and a wealth fund for future generations. My remarks, however, drew laughter. Later, several people complimented my humour.

Why this reaction? The painful reality is that my economist colleagues smirk when people (especially politicians) assume extreme market imbalances will endure, whereas real-world evidence consistently proves they won’t. For B.C. Premier Christy Clark to make promises based on a continuation of today’s extreme difference between American and eastern Asian gas prices was, to be kind, laughable.

For many years, natural gas prices differed little from one region to another. But the shale-gas revolution in the U.S. in the past decade created a glut, causing rock-bottom prices in North America. Meanwhile, prices in eastern Asia were pegged to the price of oil, which has risen. These two trends led to a price divergence starting in 2008. By 2012, Japanese gas prices were more than four times higher than North America’s.

If that difference was to hold for several decades, producers could earn sufficient revenues from Asian sales to cover shale gas extraction, pipeline transport, cooling to liquid in LNG plants, shipment across the Pacific, healthy profits, and billions in royalties and corporate taxes. That’s an attractive image in an election. But it can quickly become a mirage as gas markets behave like markets.

In competitive markets, a price imbalance triggers multiple profit-seeking actions, which work to eliminate the difference — usually sooner than expected — by those hoping to benefit from it. In this case, there are many potential competitors for the gas demands of China, Japan and their neighbours. China can invite foreign companies to help develop its massive shale gas resources. It can buy from Russia, which has enormous gas resources. It can also buy from other central Asian countries, such as Kazakhstan. It can also encourage a bidding war between prospective LNG suppliers from many parts of the world, some of which will have lower production costs than B.C.

The result will push down the price in eastern Asia. As was easily predicted by my smirking colleagues, it’s already happening. Unofficial reports put the price of a recent gas contract between China and Russia at $10.50 per million British Thermal Units, far below the peak Asian price, and close to (if not below) the cost of sending B.C. gas to China. At this price, there will be no government royalties, no lower income taxes, no debt retirement, no wealth fund. Maybe no LNG plants.

If any LNG plants are built in B.C., they will likely be constructed and operated as cheaply as possible, which will put the lie to another promise of Clark’s. In a province with legislated targets for reducing carbon pollution, she promised B.C. would have “the cleanest LNG produced anywhere in the world from well-head to waterline.”

As it turns out, this promise is easy to verify. Experts know the cleanest LNG in the world is the Snohvit project in Norway, which emits 0.35 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of LNG. The under-construction Gorgon facility in Australia will match it.

But, public documents indicate British Columbia’s proposed LNG industry will be three times worse, producing one tonne of CO2 per tonne of LNG. Were three such facilities built as proposed, they would bring oilsands-scale carbon pollution to B.C., doubling our current emissions and making it impossible to meet our legislated targets.

We could build the cleanest LNG systems in the world. This would require reducing methane leaks from processes and pipelines, capturing and storing carbon pollution, and using renewable energy to produce electricity for processing and cooling natural gas, as Clean Energy Canada has recently showed.

But this is unlikely, especially as those Asian gas prices fall. So brace yourself for another barrage of Orwellian doublespeak from government and industry, in which cleanest means dirty, great public wealth means modest private profits, and revised climate targets mean missed climate targets. No doubt my economist colleagues will be amused. But should they?

Image Credit: Province of B.C. via Flickr.

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If you were busy enjoying the holiday season with your family, you might have missed a request for public opinion made by the federal government on December 17, 2013.  

The Government of Canada was seeking comments from the public on the proposed Woodfibre Natural Gas Ltd. export terminal that, if approved, will operate for 25 years in Howe Sound, producing between 1.5 and 2.1 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) annually.

The public comment period closed Monday, January 6, 2014.

In addition to comments on the potential environmental effects of the project, the federal government was also seeking the public’s opinion on B.C.’s request to perform a provincial environmental assessment of the project, instead of a federal review done under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA) 2012.

B.C. and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency have a memorandum of understanding that allows the province to oversee environmental assessments and First Nations consultation under certain CEAA 2012 provisions.

The project includes the construction of a liquefied natural gas facility seven kilometres southwest of Squamish on the northwestern shoreline of Howe Sound, according to a Government of Canada press release. Both a liquefaction plant and a LNG export facility would be built to ship B.C. gas to global markets.

As Mark Hume writes for the Globe and Mail, B.C. Premier Christy Clark’s rush to develop the province’s natural gas resources while scaling up the production and export of LNG could raise opposition with local communities feeling hoodwinked by inadequate public consultation and environmental review.

In the case of this proposed facility, the public comment period overlapped with Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year's Day, leaving a paltry 10 days for individuals to research and formally submit their concerns — if they were even aware of the proposal.

Vel Anderson, member of the Elphinstone Electors Association in Gisbons B.C., told the Globe and Mail her community did not have time to respond to the project proposal.

“It’s frightening what has happened,” she said. “Here on this coast we received no information…There’s been nothing in our two local daily newspapers.There’s been nothing about the facility that’s going to go in at Woodfibre and yet we will be directly affected throughout this whole process.”

Anderson believes citizens along the proposed LNG tanker route have been dealt a similar hand.

If approved, the project could bring 40 LNG tankers through Howe Sound each year. Woodfibre LNG states on its website that the particular site in Squamish was chosen for its “existing infrastructure and a welcome regulatory regime.”

The welcome might be too warm for some regional locals, however. Feeling rushed, Anderson requested the federal government extend the public comment period.

“Thousands of people around the coastal area of Howe Sound will be directly affected and deserved to be informed,” she wrote.

She told the Globe and Mail, “having this public comment period slated for over the holiday season, one wonders what’s going on.”

“It doesn’t look like we’re really invited to comment.”

The LNG facilities, Hume wrote, would be constructed on a former industrial pulp mill site and surrounding gas infrastructure would connect with existing pipelines, creating little new disturbance.

“So the project,” he continues, “on many fronts, looks like it could easily win support. Instead, the government has created a sense of unease by appearing to rush the process of public consultation.”

B.C. already boasts itself as a “future leader in natural gas supply and export” and promises major growth of an LNG industry providing thousands of new jobs for British Columbians. Christy Clark’s vision of B.C. has yet to come to fruition with no LNG export facilities currently under construction.

Perhaps the rush is merely to return the horse to the front of the cart?

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The B.C. Liberal government released an energy awareness quiz Monday touting the benefits of B.C.'s fracked gas boom while failing to address the implications of gas development on the province's water and greenhouse gas emissions.

The LNG in B.C. Awareness Quiz is already being tagged as a promotional tool used to win public approval and downplay the negative side effects of the B.C. Liberal government's heavy push for liqueified natural gas (LNG). More than a dozen LNG export facilities are proposed for the B.C. coast to export gas to Asian markets. 

Athough directly related to fracking, the quiz makes no mention of the controversial industrial process and the wide range of social and ecological concerns arising in its wake.

The quiz is comprised of the ten following questions and extended answers:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

What the quiz fails to mention is the fact that although natural gas extraction has occurred in B.C. for more than 50 years, the advent of modern multi-stage slickwater hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has drastically changed the nature of the process. Advancements in drilling technologies, such as horizontal fracturing, have opened up previously inaccessible reserves.

Yet these technological advancements have also dramatically increased the amount of water required to frack a well, the amount of toxic chemicals used per well and threats to underground drinking water sources. Although natural gas is often labeled a 'cleaner' source of energy because it emits less carbon at power plants, the upstream environmental costs associated with the resource's production are significant.

Fracking requires enormous amounts of water, and B.C. officials are already struggling to keep pace with the increase in gas production. Just last month, several environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission for endangering the province's waterways and violating the Water Act. Argued by the environmental law firm Ecojustice, the suit claims the Commission granted hundreds of short-term water leases to natural gas companies, thereby allowing industry to avoid crucial environmental assessment.

Caitlyn Vernon, campaigner for the Sierra Club B.C. which participated in the suit, says the impacts of natural gas in B.C. aren't adequately taken into account. The B.C. Liberal government's attempt at increasing 'awareness' about LNG and fracking fails to meet the test, she said.

"It is insulting to British Columbians that our government is using tax dollars to spread such blatant industry propaganda, disrespecting the rights of British Columbians to consider all the facts and make informed decisions," she said. "When it comes to the environmental impacts of LNG, the full story is not, in fact, what industry would have us believe. This so-called quiz doesn't even mention fracking, which is not clean, can release as much carbon pollution as coal, and is already impacting the water of B.C.'s Northeast."

"Instead of being told what to think, B.C. families should have a say in deciding what the 'right' answer is for our communities," she added.

As DeSmog Canada previously reported, fugitive emissions from natural gas production are expected to be seven times greater than reported, increasing the province's carbon footprint by 25 per cent, or the equivalent of adding an additional three million cars to B.C.'s roads.

Marc Lee, senior energy economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, notes that, beyond the problems associated with fracking, liquefying natural gas is a carbon-intensive process. He writes for the Progressive Economics Forum that B.C.'s path to LNG riches has some serious climate obstacles:

"Clark’s predecessor, Gordon Campbell, brought in a range of climate action policies in 2007-08, including the province’s well-regarded carbon tax, and legislated greenhouse gas reduction targets. While some insider champions of LNG do not care about climate change, the province is wrestling with its own cognitive dissonance: how to stick to past commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while substantially growing production of a key fossil fuel. B.C.’s media savvy Premier now talks about 'the cleanest natural gas' or 'cleanest LNG' in the world.

The problem is the math: in order to move ahead with LNG projects while still meeting the government’s own GHG targets, every other sector of the B.C. economy would need to make radical and unprecedented reductions in its emissions. One option under examination is purchasing carbon offsets, but this could be expensive and B.C.’s offset regime has been much criticized. Another issue is accounting conventions that do not count embodied GHG emissions in exports (instead, they count in the importing country’s GHG inventory). On a lifecycle basis, total GHG emissions into the air that originated below ground in B.C. would double or even triple, depending on the number of LNG plants. It would be the emissions equivalent of putting between 24 to 64 million cars on the roads of the world.

Related to, and compounding this, is that liquifying gas for export is itself massively energy intensive. B.C.’s 2010 Energy Plan committed to 93% of electricity production in the province coming from clean or renewable sources. Were it to be met by new renewable supply, B.C. Hydro modelled an increase in demand from three LNG equivalent to one-third of its total current production. Renewables are more expensive, and existing commitments to private power producers for new supply are already creating pressure for price hikes. To get around this, the B.C. government conveniently declared that burning natural gas for LNG production would be considered to be clean energy."

Lee adds that the estimate of 75,000 new jobs being advanced by the B.C. government is also not credible. Originally, the government claimed 800 permanent jobs would result from the construction of three new LNG plants, but eventually inflated this number to more than 75,000. According to plans from major players like Shell, however, pre-fab structures may be shipped to B.C. during the construction phase to limit costs. This, in addition to B.C.'s growing reliance on temporary foreign workers, suggests the permanent job estimate of 75,000 is grossly overblown.

If the B.C. Liberals hope to meaningfully increase the LNG knowledge of average British Columbians, relying on industry-style public relations and an incomplete portrait of the industry's impacts won't do.

As Rachel Carson wrote in her groundbreaking work Silent Spring, when it comes to industrial pollutants the public is often fed "little tranquilizing pills of half truths."

She adds, "We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks…The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts."

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The government of Alberta’s continued reliance on the tar sands as the province’s main economic driver has put Premier Alison Redford in a very awkward position recently. With the market for foreign oil drying up in the US, her government is facing a $6 billion budget shortfall. For the first time in many years, Alberta is being forced to reach out for a little help from its neighbours, but the reception has been chilly.

The trouble began last year, when British Columbia Premier Christy Clark discovered that putting her unqualified support behind Enbridge’s plan to run its Northern Gateway pipeline through the province would constitute political suicide in an election year.

Whatever Clark’s motivations may have been—environmental or political—the result is that now they are in the midst of a struggle that Maclean’s Magazine calls, “the greatest political rivalry since former Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams ordered the Canadian flag removed from every government building in a dispute with the feds over offshore energy royalties.”

Then late in January, Redford met with Ontario’s new Premier Kathleen Wynn and by all accounts, relations were similarly strained. Several municipalities in Ontario have expressed concerns over the environmental dangers involved in Line 9, which was constructed in the 1970s and may not be up to carrying the highly corrosive bitumen being put out by the tar sands.

To be fair, this mess isn’t all Redford’s doing. Given Alberta’s history, it’s not surprising that other provinces might be wary of her advances. As Parkland Institute director Trevor Harrison pointed out last year in an op-ed piece for the Winnipeg Free Press, Alberta’s energy policy has historically leaned towards isolation and contempt for the rest of the country’s wishes.

In 1982 while serving as mayor of Calgary, Ralph Klein ran into a similar problem attracting investors to his city because of the open contempt he showed for the eastern workers seeking jobs in the province’s newly developing oil patch. With characteristic bluntness, he called them “bums" and "creeps” and blamed them for the rise in crime in his city. 

During his 14 years as Premier, the famously cantankerous Klein steered Alberta through much of the oil boom, but showed little interest in sharing or saving the wealth, preferring instead to spread it around in the form of “prosperity bonuses” of $400 to each Alberta resident in 2005. It’s sobering now to think that if that money had been saved, the interest alone might have gone a long way to digging Alberta out of its current financial hole. It’s even more frightening that, while the rest of the world was beginning to accept the hard lessons of climate change and oil dependence last year, the Alberta Wildrose Party promised a new round of bonuses beginning in 2015 should it have been elected.

Klein also had little interest in federal calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In 2002, as part of a campaign to keep then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien from ratifying the Kyoto Accord, he famously dismissed warnings about climate change by wondering whether the first ice age was caused by “dinosaur farts.”

The message from the Alberta government has always been, the oil is ours and how we mine it, refine it and sell it is no one’s business but our own. Now that position is simply no longer tenable. In a recent address to the Alberta people, Redford laid out the challenges before the province and promised to find a way out without crippling social programs or, magically, raising taxes.

What she didn't say was that Alberta can no longer afford to make policy as though it were cordoned off from the rest of the country. It needs the help of other provinces to export its oil and that means taking into account the concerns of those who have not been blinded by a couple of decades of short-sighted prosperity.

But it is not enough to simply look for new markets; if Alberta is to free itself from this uncomfortable cycle of boom and bust, Redford must begin to rethink this reliance on the tar sands and find ways to diversify the economy. The question is, can the province let go of decades of rhetoric and take a new road?

In her address, Redford said that oil and gas “are our assets.” I disagree. In the 15 years that I lived in Alberta I learned that, as well as being a province of extraordinary resource wealth, it is a province rich in industriousness. Redford’s constituents are willing to work hard to secure their future, so why does she, like her predecessors, insist upon leading them down a path that puts them at the whim of politics and world markets?

Why not skip that inevitable pain and redirect some of that skill and ingenuity into clean, renewable energy industries that we know have a future? 

Image Credit: Government of Alberta.

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The British Columbia government has plans to double or even triple the amount of natural gas produced in the province in order to meet growing international demand. Although the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline is a key issue of concern to British Columbians, widespread fracking for unconventional gas presents another significant challenge that should be on the public's radar, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).

As the CCPA reports, BC's gas production targets all but ensure the province will fail to meet its own 2007 emission reductions targets as laid out in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act. Exported gas from BC is expected to contribute the emissions equivalent of putting 24 million new cars on the road, and all for a 0.1 percent projected increase in provincial jobs.

You can watch this animated video here for an overview:

In a 2011 report the CCPA highlighted these outcomes of BC's fracking ambitions:

– A potential doubling of industry greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, as fracking activities escalate. If BC is to meet its legislated targets for greenhouse gas reduction, every other sector of the provincial economy will have to cut their emissions in half.

– The BC government giving shale gas companies access to public water supplies for 20 years, with little or no public consultation despite the massive amounts of water used (up to 600 Olympic swimming pools per gas well pad).

– Potential increases in shale gas piped to Alberta, where it already helps to fuel operations at the tar sands. 

In response, CCPA advances these recommendations:

– A cap on annual shale gas production.

– An end to all government subsidies of the natural gas industry.

– A requirement that the province explain how BC will meet its legislatively mandated greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets while simultaneously supporting the shale gas industry.

– Increased water prices for industry, to encourage innovation and conservation (currently companies pay nothing for the water they use, or nominal charges of just $2.75 for each Olympic swimming pool of water).

– A requirement that the industry pay full cost for the electricity it uses.

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