Something all the liquefied-natural-gas skeptics out there should know: Natural Gas Development Minister Rich Coleman gets a big kick out of you.
In fact, he’s laughing at you and all your worries and nit-picking and carping.
His half-hour speech this week on LNG had the unmistakable tone of someone who is just itching to say years from now: “I told you so.”
There’s a long road to travel before B.C. will see if he gets that immense satisfaction. And even though the B.C. Liberals won an election partly on the audacious promises of prosperity flowing from LNG, there’s still skepticism about the concept.
Last week’s throne speech was the fifth to mention LNG in some fashion. And there are still no signed deals to start building facilities.
The Liberals were fairly clear that the required tax regime that investors have to see before committing was going to be in place by now.
Through 2013 they were guardedly optimistic it would be introduced later that year. But they started walking back from that target in November.
The budget just released a few pages outlining what it might look like. The law won’t come down until the fall.
In 2011, the idea was to have one plant up and running by 2015, and three by 2020. The second target still stands, but the first one looks unlikely at this point. And whether it’s an inferiority complex or just a nervous reaction to competition, every move made in other jurisdictions trying exactly the same thing is noted anxiously in B.C.
Which is where Coleman is getting his kicks these days.
“I always get a kick out of the fact that some people, when they talk about our budget and our speech, say: ‘Oh, they’ve got a vision, and they’re behind. They’re not going to get there.’ ”
His point was that B.C. has an obligation to try, rather than dismiss the chance as unwinnable and not bother.
As it stands, he counts a dozen major companies who are “looking” at investing in LNG in B.C. They range from small investments of $1 billion up to as high as $40 billion.
“Most jurisdictions would be doing backflips of excitement to see if they can attract one of those. We have 12.”
Coleman counts seven of them as major opportunities, in the $30-billion to $40-billion range.
He said five of the companies have invested $500 million to $1.5 billion just on preliminary work.
That’s taken as another cause for optimism, although some of the companies are covering their bets and doing the same thing elsewhere in the world. Coleman’s version of his talks with senior company officials is a story of executives heaping praise on the Liberal government for the way they run things. He said one unnamed CEO said the firm is in B.C. “because you want to get it done” and because fiscal stability eases worries the government will come back later and raise taxes.
But wanting to get it done sounds like an elementary requirement. Everyone in the race to supply Asia with natural gas wants to get it done, or they wouldn’t be in the race. And the tax outline in the budget does exactly what the CEO feared — it hikes the tax rate further down the road.
Although that’s at least made clear from the outset.
He rejected the idea LNG is behind schedule.
“I get a kick out of some of the other folks out there saying: ‘You’re behind schedule.’ No we’re not. We’re actually right on the time frame that I established.”
One thing that works in the government’s favour is the scale of the enterprise. The values are so vast that even delivering a fraction of the potential could count as a win.
Coleman said: “They say: ‘They can’t all go ahead.’ I say: ‘OK. Let’s have three.’ That’s $100 billion. That’s 100,000 jobs.”
It’s that comfort level that’s giving him the kicks, and the amusement.
“It’s laughable when people say: ‘I don’t know why you’re pursuing it,’ because I don’t know why you wouldn’t.”
