Northern B.C. residents who are so inclined could fill up a fair chunk of their calendars just going to information meetings about different liquefied natural gas proposals, a Smithers lawyer said this week.
Richard Overstall, a director of a small group called the Northwest Institute for Bioregional Research, outlined the extent of the LNG “gold rush” now underway in northern B.C.
“You’ve got some 20 environmental-assessment processes or potential environmental processes going on, each one pretending that none of the others exist.
“This is virtually impossible for the public to keep up with. In this town, we see almost weekly open houses and notices from the environmental-assessment office.”
The group has a handy chart showing all the liquefied natural gas plants and pipelines that are being talked up.
But Overstall is the first to admit parts of it are inaccurate. “It’s so hard to keep up,” he said in an interview Friday. They count 11 LNG proposals, not counting competing complementary pipeline proposals. (He said the proposed pipeline routes look like a dish of spaghetti.)
Only a handful of the ideas being floated will likely proceed. But the job of sorting them out is proceeding case-by-case, with no overview of the cumulative impact, he told the legislature finance committee.
Governments have any number of review requirements, but Overstall said the cumulative impact of all the proposals isn’t being addressed. “Each company is acting as if none of the other proposals exist. They’re not talking to one another. They’re being assessed individually as if none of the other proposals exist.”
He said the B.C. government recognizes cumulative impact as an issue in other spheres, but not so far in LNG. The finance committee is touring B.C. collecting ideas for next year’s budget. Overstall pitched the idea of a strategic environmental assessment that would look at the big picture.
He said the group is not for or against LNG at this point. It wants the federal and provincial governments to put together an overarching look at all the concepts.
He told MLAs an experience in Australia has some bearing on B.C.’s current situation. Three different companies built three LNG plants in western Australia, but “everyone admitted after they were built that probably only one or at the most two were necessary.”
Overstall said Friday that a strategic look could produce a common energy corridor. That would provide a generally approved idea of where any or all of the natural gas pipelines from the northeast to the coast might run. There could be a similar understanding on the siting of all the LNG plants.
Another member of the research group, Nadia Nowak, warned MLAs about the impact on greenhouse-gas emissions. The government’s upcoming LNG tax regime should be structured to encourage GHG reductions, by recognizing carbon capture and use of electricity at the plants, rather than gas.
The presentation echoed a letter the University of Victoria’s environmental law centre wrote in August on behalf of the group.
The law centre wrote to the federal and provincial environment ministers stressing the way each project is being developed and considered in isolation from the others, with ad hoc reactions from governments.
The 60-page brief is consistently dubious about LNG proposals and skeptical of the overall benefits.
“The risk is that current environmental-assessment processes will miss the forest for the trees. Government and the public are considering individual pieces of overall LNG development, but no strategic assessment is being conducted on the big picture.”
Just So You Know: MLAs also heard about another piece of the LNG puzzle this week: The skills training needed to support the thousands of jobs to be created by the projects.
College of New Caledonia faculty told the committee that two welding instructors were laid off this year, ending training in that field.
NDP MLA Mike Farnworth said: “Last time I checked ... pipelines are built by welders. So we need welders to build a pipeline in this part of the province, yet we’re laying off welding instructors. That doesn’t make sense to me.”
