B.C.’s natural gas industry is a real head scratcher, isn’t it?
The development of the industry is torn between opportunity and fear, holding Northern prosperity in the balance. The degree of opportunity available, and level of caution required, depends entirely on who you ask and who you trust.
The natural gas extraction, liquefaction, and export industry in BC - the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry - seems to provide little anyone can agree on.
On the economic merits of getting behind LNG, there’s competing opinion. The Globe and Mail, certainly a reliable source of news, published two articles recently almost back-to-back. One elaborating on the industry’s potential to economically transform Northern B.C. into a powerhouse, the other throwing water on the province’s expectations for what the industry might provide.
These are experts, on both sides, with very different appraisals of the situation at hand. Is it a matter of picking your expert? The problem with that is coming up with a principle for selecting the opinion you go with. Without a principle beyond your own preference, you’re being - literally - unsound in your selection.
For the sake of argument let’s say LNG has great economic potential. The experts with that opinion have one thing on their side; a lot of real money is being invested in LNG. Call it skin in the game.
I’ll take the economic opinion of someone with skin in the game over the opinion of sideline commentators most days, at least until I have some good reason to do otherwise.
But even if the industry is economically sound, we’re left with environmental concerns. While natural gas pipelines don’t cause the gut-level reaction oil pipelines do, the extraction end of the industry provokes tremendous consternation.
Along with the LNG industry, we have another highly-resourced industry: the LNG protest industry. Trading on fear, and funded in part by U.S. sources with ties to their own oil and gas industries (if you trust the accounting of B.C.’s own Vivian Krause, whose name you can google if you’re at all interested), it leverages the honest concerns of citizens against their own elected government.
If you don’t trust her accounting, or think it doesn’t matter, you’re still left with sets of experts disagreeing with one another over the degree of risk inherent in the industry.
If you turn to First Nations for some insight into the situation, things get even more confusing. Some First Nations, whose traditional territories natural gas pipelines are proposed to go through, are onboard provided the industry can pass certain financial and environmental tests.
But some other First Nation organizations, whose traditional territories natural gas pipelines are slated to go through, are dead-set against any pipeline proposal whatsoever.
The thing is, the traditional territories referred to are, in many cases, the same territories in either case. You have the Wet’suwet’en First Nation (WFN), to take an example close to home, and the Office of the Wet’suwet’en. Both share claims, to some degree, over the same traditional territories. But both disagree on the direction LNG should take.
No matter where you turn, the LNG commentary industry is complicated. Every voice is laden with a particular interest, whether it’s economic, environmental, or political. It feels like a game of pick your expert, take your side, and settle in to your position.
At some point we have to move past this Gordian Knot of conflicting, even if heartfelt, voices.
The premier won the last election without being shy about the province’s plan for LNG. What more social license does she need to move forward?