Tortured logic
One might think British Columbia’s Auditor General would favour maximum information in financial disclosure. Apparently, not in this province.
natural gas
Ministry’s cozy relationship with industry costs taxpayers billions
As is typical of resource management, the regulating ministry sees its prime purpose is to enhance growth and profitability of companies extracting resources. the public share of produced values is…
Unbelievable giveaway
The case is clear. British Columbia’s Government decided to reduce the public share of natural gas revenues to almost nothing. This is despite substantial growth in the quantities of natural…
Natural resource giveaway
British Columbia sees itself in competition with Alberta to attract gas exploration and production companies. As a result, both provinces have been in a race to the bottom. By giving…
Paying $185,000 for each job
BC’s fossil fuel industry benefited from credits worth $902 million in fiscal year 2018 and $4.2 billion in the past five years. Each of the jobs in oil and gas…
NDP hides financial information and misleads the Legislature
Tax expenditures are subsidies delivered through the taxation system. These promote policy goals of government but are subject to far less scrutiny and disclosure than direct spending. The primary beneficiaries…
BC subsidies to gas producers: $8.6 billion, 2007-2017
Citizens of British Columbia are facilitating and subsidizing production of bitumen from Alberta tar sands. How’s that for an example of hypocrisy by a Government that claims it object to…
Affording the “unaffordable”
Some BC politicians are not bright. Either that, or they are thoroughly dishonest. Maybe both. Liberals saw natural gas revenues drop from $11.5 billion in the five years ended March…
Fugitive emissions and fugitive revenues
Between 2004 and 2017, the quantity of natural gas produced increased by 64% and the royalties, which once measured over $1.5 billion annually, disappeared.
Corporate interest outranks public interest
Many citizens — although not In-Sights readers — will be shocked to learn that credits owed natural gas producers soared by more than $1 billion from April to November 2018.…
The race to the bottom is over
In the fiscal years 2016 and 2017, natural gas royalty payments totalled $291 million. However, credits owed producers increased $748 million so, if the province bothered to record these obligations…
Hypocrisy of politicians exposed
Politicians demand ordinary citizens pay increasing amounts of carbon tax — supposedly to reduce fossil fuel consumption — while at the same time they dish out billions of dollars in…
Billions of debts and unconscionable messes
A series of provincial administrations and the politicians and bureaucrats we-the-people employ have consistently lied to us by both commission and omission. By wilful blindness, they have put and are…
Taxing and subsidizing carbon
While BC consumers of carbon pay an ever increasing tax — $10 billion since 2009 — carbon producers are enjoying billions of dollars in subsidies. In the fiscal years 2007…
Fossil fuel pollution we forget
After Canada’s federal government and its energy regulator chose to examine broader environmental effects of Trans Mountain’s Energy East pipelines, including upstream and downstream emissions, the American owned company abandoned…
Nat Gas Killed Coal. Now It’s Time to Kill Off Nat Gas.
Natural gas remains widely seen as a helpful “bridge fuel” during the transition from high carbon fossil fuels to alternative, clean energy. That myth is based on end use comparisons.…
Albertans lose money while energy companies continue to let escaping methane make climate change worse
PHOTOS: Gas wells a-flaring in the United States’ Bakken Field (Photo: U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric and Administration). Below: Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) and Progress Alberta…
Ending natural gas giveaways?
On the campaign trail, Christy Clark had some words while speaking in Fort St. John. She said: We have a party (the NDP) that doesn’t believe in natural gas. They…
Before Clark, after Clark
When Encana’s founding CEO Gwyn Morgan became Christy Clark’s transition team advisor, natural gas producers knew they’d bet on a good thing. After six years of Clark, we now see…
When regulators don’t believe in regulation
When a new government takes office, there is often a significant change at senior levels of the civil service and among OIC political appointments. One person still employed by the…