LNG - Fracking

There’ll be 272 new seats in trades programs at the B.C. Institute of Technology this September, and the provincial government says they’ll help equip students to work in the proposed liquefied natural gas industry.

Advanced Education Minister Amrik Virk said Monday the Burnaby, B.C.-based institution will receive a total of $1.35-million to pay for the new positions and some minor equipment, and there’ll be similar announcements in the coming weeks across the province as the government rolls out its Skills for Jobs Blueprint.

The U.S. Eastern Seaboard is being opened to offshore oil and gas exploration for the first time in decades with the Obama administration's approval Friday of sonic cannons that can pinpoint energy deposits deep beneath the ocean floor.

The decision dismays environmentalists worried about the immediate impact of the sonic cannons, which shoot sound waves 100 times louder than a jet engine through waters shared by whales and turtles.

Saving endangered species was their best hope of extending a ban against offshore drilling off the U.S. Atlantic coast.

New science shows that Pacific Northwest LNG and Prince Rupert LNG are smack dab in the most sensitive spot for millions of Skeena salmon, treasured by fisheries, anglers, First Nations and sushi lovers.

The gas terminals couldn't be in a worse spot, say scientists.

Two multi-billion-dollar LNG marine export facilities slated for the province’s northwest are under fire for being smack dab in the most critically important waters for rearing millions of wild B.C. salmon, a new Simon Fraser University scientific study reveals.

Last month, the Canadian government announced its approval of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline. It was not unexpected. Neither was the reaction. On the one hand, it has given Harper’s opponents a convenient platform to score political points for the next election. On the other, it has given the NGOs the chance to try to boost their campaigns with predictable statements and rallies in the streets.

A new study explains how just four wells forcing massive amounts of drilling wastewater into the ground are probably shaking up Oklahoma.

Those wells seem to have triggered more than 100 small-to-medium earthquakes in the past five years, according to a study published Thursday by the journal Science. Many of the quakes were much farther away from the wells than expected.

. . . Koyama was visiting from Tokyo, where he's chief economist at the Institute of Energy Economics Japan, and an advisor to the country's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

He's also a globally recognized expert on natural gas markets. These days there's a lot to keep track of. So many countries are now scurrying to supply Asia with LNG that Koyama describes the competition as "very severe." As a result, he says it's "quite difficult to expect a big profit margin for any LNG supplier," especially for the costly projects being developed in B.C.

“For now we see through a glass, darkly” – 1 Corinthians 13:12, The Bible. There is no doubt about it.  Premier Christy Clark wants a drastic re-ordering of our provincial economy.  In her keynote speech to the Second International LNG conference on May 22, 2014, she declared that the provincial government is looking at “every decision we make through the lens of whether or not it furthers our purpose in creating an LNG industry here in BC … This is our central preoccupation.”

Wells can leak from their drill holes as gas can travel along gaps and cracks in the cement that is used to plug the hole between the steel pipe and the underground rock surfaces, says the 69-page report authored by three University of Waterloo scientists. Photograph by Bryan Schlosser, Regina Leader-Post. Up to 10 per cent of B.C. natural gas wells are leaking and some have become “super-emitters” of methane, which is an environmental and health concern, says a new report.

The BC government says it is "taking an aggressive approach" to jump start a gigantic new fossil fuel industry in the province -- Liquid Natural Gas (LNG). Thirteen major projects have been proposed so far. The yearly climate pollution resulting from these 13 LNG projects would be: