British Columbia

B.C.’s liquefied natural gas industry threatens to harm the environment and erode Canada’s energy security, says a new analysis.

Geoscientist David Hughes, in a study for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, warns that LNG is far from the clean fuel that the B.C. government portrays it to be. Water filling the equivalent of nearly 22,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools a year would be required in the industry’s fracking process in drilling for natural gas in northeast British Columbia, he said.

Treaty 8 First Nations Astounded at PNW LNG MOU Signing

https://twitter.com/UBCIC/status/601739918692323328

Economist and former ICBC president and CEO Robyn Allan withdrew from the National Energy Board’s (NEB) review of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project Tuesday, saying she can no longer “endorse a process that is not working.”

In a letter addressed to Sherri Young, secretary of the NEB, Allan said the “review is not conducted on a level playing field” and that because the panel is “not an impartial referee…the game is rigged.”

Allan said she began to seriously question the process when oral cross-examination was removed from the process.

The prospect of a liquefied natural gas industry in B.C. would be a game-changer for aboriginal communities, Premier Christy Clark said on Wednesday. But she sidestepped the question of what happens if some of those communities continue to say no to the developments.

Instead, Ms. Clark’s announcement about a major step along the path toward securing the Pacific NorthWest LNG plant – a proposal already rejected by the Lax Kw’alaams – left the door open to pushing the project through, despite the province’s preference to avoid a confrontation over aboriginal rights and title.

From the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, what unfolded in B.C. last week must have looked strange.

While the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation was voting against a $1.1 billion offer of cash and land to support Petronas’ $11 billion Pacific NorthWest LNG (PNW) project in Prince Rupert, some members were reportedly giving a tentative thumbs-up to the Eagle Spirit Energy refined oil pipeline proposal.

A senior aboriginal leader in British Columbia says First Nations will continue to oppose oil and gas developments in the province even if it means rejecting billion-dollar payouts – as long as environmental protections are not guaranteed.

With construction on the Site C dam expected to start in just a few months, groups opposed to the 9 billion dollar project were in Vancouver trying to gain support in stopping it from going ahead.

“This new report outlines the alarming consequences for local wildlife and ecosystems in the event of a major oil spill in Burrard Inlet, the Salish Sea, or the Fraser River Estuary,” said Mayor Gregor Robertson

In response to Kinder Morgan’s failure to carry out analysis of the potential consequences of an oil spill, the City of Vancouver, City of Burnaby, and the Tsleil-Waututh Nation conducted an independent oil spill trajectory modelling of four major oil spill scenarios in the Burrard Inlet.

A natural gas benefit offer worth more than $1 billion has been rejected by a First Nation on B.C.'s northwest coast, but not everyone thinks it will necessarily scuttle the project.

Pacific NorthWest LNG was proposing to build a pipeline and terminal in the Lax Kw'alaams Band territory just south of Prince Rupert.

Band members were asked to vote on a $1.15 billion offer over 40 years in exchange for their consent for the project.

The vote in Vancouver on Tuesday was the third in a series conducted by the First Nation that rejected the project.

VICTORIA - West Moberly First Nations Chief Roland Willson held up a frozen bull trout Monday and said the large fish is contaminated with mercury.

"Typically, you'd be proud of this fish," he said. "But we can't eat this."

Willson and members of the McLeod Lake Indian Band, located in northeastern British Columbia, arrived at the legislature in Victoria with more than 90 kilograms of bull trout packed in two coolers.