Why do B.C. politicians agree with Trump on LNG?

Jan. 16, 2025

Ignoring warnings about rising energy bills, B.C. and U.S. plan more gas exports

Incoming U.S. president Donald Trump promises a dramatic expansion of the LNG industry starting next week. And British Columbia is going along for the ride.

“I will approve the export terminals on my very first day back,” Trump said at a rally last year. Meanwhile B.C. Premier David Eby is following the same path on LNG, throwing his government’s support behind new gas projects.

But expanded LNG exports could crush American families with rising energy costs, warns the outgoing U.S. Secretary of Energy. And rather than replacing coal overseas, liquified gas is delaying the buildout of renewable energy – leading to worse climate disasters.

The same warnings apply in B.C., where nearly one-third of residents are now financially insolvent and sliding deeper into debt. This month FortisBC gas bills jumped 18 per cent to pay for new pipelines, including one to the Woodfibre LNG terminal.

So why is B.C. following Trump deeper into the global LNG game? And what are the risks for B.C. households, businesses – and the First Nations being encouraged to build more LNG projects?

American supremacy

12 years ago, former U.S. Army general and CIA director David Petraeus laid out his vision for global economic and military dominance. His priority was fracking and LNG projects across North America, including “the energy-rich and economically dynamic Canada and Mexico”.

“We are the world’s largest producer of natural gas, with a 100-year supply,” Petraeus wrote. He advocated for new licences to export LNG, which the U.S. did not allow until 2015. With that in place, “North America — not China, Japan, Europe or India” could lead the world economy, Petraeus hoped.

Petraeus has chased this dream ever since, as the head of intelligence at KKR. One of the world’s largest private equity firms, KKR has bought up gas projects across the U.S., Mexico and Canada, including the Coastal GasLink pipeline built by TC Energy here in B.C.

The idea of a fracking-powered U.S. juggernaut has been embraced by Republican politicians and their campaign donors in the oil and gas industry. “American energy supremacy,” is how former Vice President Mike Pence described his plan to overtake China.

“As long as I am President, we will remain the number one producer of oil and natural gas on Earth,” Donald Trump vowed during his previous term. Trump also has close ties to TC Energy, with the company’s CEO celebrating Trump’s election win last November.

But shipping methane gas to higher-priced markets puts households in competition with international LNG brokers. That can have a dramatic effect on prices, like in Australia where gas bills tripled after the country started exporting LNG.

Concerned about the cost-of-living crisis, and under increasing pressure to act on climate, President Biden paused the approval of new LNG export licences last January. It is that moratorium Trump plans to overturn next week.

Wall Street licks its chops

Buoyed by Trump’s win, the U.S. financial sector is doubling down on fracking and LNG, including here in B.C. It’s not just KKR – on Tuesday, Western LNG announced it had secured funding from the world’s largest alternative asset manager, Blackstone Inc.

Western LNG is a shell company formed in Houston, Texas to raise money for the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline and its sister project, Ksi Lisims LNG. Its skeleton staff includes Tom Syer – a former BC Liberal chief of staff and TC Energy vice president – and Rebecca Scott, the former press secretary to premier Christy Clark.

On paper Western LNG is partnered with the Nisga’a treaty government, but neither has any significant assets or experience building oil and gas projects.

Instead the money is coming from Wall Street, with Blackstone joined by the Jefferies Financial Group, Transition Equity Partners “and other new and existing private investors”. TC Energy lobbyists have been working behind the scenes to secure permits from the B.C. government. And U.S. engineering giant Bechtel has been tapped to lead construction.

Provincial ministers haven’t yet approved the LNG terminal (or given PRGT the go-ahead to build using an expired project certificate from 2014). But Wall Street investors can read the news. It’s no secret the B.C. government has approved every LNG project ever proposed, under both the BC Liberals and BC NDP.

“This funding fully supports the remaining development activities for the Ksi Lisims LNG and Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) projects through to a Final Investment Decision (FID), expected later this year,” states the news release.

Swimming with sharks

Behind the overblown rhetoric from Republicans, and the greed of Wall Street money managers, lies one simple fact: the only way to make LNG exports profitable for them is for the rest of us to pay. In B.C. that means higher gas and hydro bills – plus massive taxpayer subsides.

Steve Schwarzman, the CEO of Blackstone, earned $900 million USD in 2023 and $1.26 billion the year before, adding to his personal fortune of $51 billion. His company has bought up more than $1 trillion in assets. Much of that is real estate – commercial properties but also people’s homes.

Blackstone owns at least 350,000 rental homes in the U.S., where it’s become notorious for evicting tenants and jacking up rents. Blackstone owns at least $20 billion worth of properties in Canada, with a focus on apartment buildings in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto.

Described as the largest corporate landlord in history, Blackstone is a significant force making housing less affordable in North America. And now the company sees an opportunity to extract more profits from the Ksi Lisims LNG terminal and the PRGT pipeline.

The Nisga’a people may be hosting the buffet. But the sharks gorging themselves in this $55-billion feeding frenzy are the Wall Street financiers, the lawyers who arrange the contracts, major contractors like Bechtel, the fracking companies selling the gas, and the LNG traders in Singapore and Tokyo. The locals get the table scraps, and the cleanup.

The 51st state

Ksi Lisims brands itself as an Indigenous-led project to bring prosperity to northern reserves, while healing the planet with a clean-burning miracle fuel. The political consultants at Western LNG know that’s what the public needs to hear to support more fossil fuel development.

But we only have to look at the people promoting this industry to understand the real purpose of projects like Ksi Lisims LNG. Donald Trump, David Petraeus, Steve Schwarzman – these men are not motivated by social justice, Indigenous rights or stopping climate disasters.

They’re driven by profit, and an America-first mindset that sees Canada as a quaint resource colony. Petraeus calls the sovereign territory crossed by the Coastal GasLink pipeline the “tribal areas of Canada,” inhabited by people who can either be bribed or moved aside at gunpoint.

It’s a strange set of allies for a social-democratic BC NDP government. Given the costs it would inflict on people all over B.C., Trump’s enthusiasm for LNG should be another reason for us to think twice.