Syntaris Power

British Columbia, where the environmentalists are your neighbors and First Nations a force, is the gatekeeper today of Canadian oil and gas industry growth.

Without new infrastructure in the province, the Alberta and Saskatchewan-based oil industry, and the B.C.-focused natural gas industry, can’t get to what they desperately want — new customers in Asia. B.C. is also the home of some of the richest natural gas fields on the continent, making it as important to gas producers as the oil sands are to the oil sector.

In Rich Coleman, B.C.’s newly appointed energy minister, industry will find a strong ally — and other provincial governments a motivated competitor.

The province led the way under former Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell in the past decade in improving government terms and regulation to promote industry activity.

“We are completely open to defining ways do things better and be competitive,” Mr. Coleman said in an interview in the harbour-front legislature, fresh from a visit to Calgary’s energy headquarters to collect feedback and ideas.

“One of the CEOs said to me we are in the Top Five or 10 as places to invest in the energy sector, probably in the world. And I said, ‘How do I get to No. 1?’ That’s my interest.”

…As a former forest minister, Mr. Coleman is well aware of the dangers of depending on only one market — the United States. The province led the push to find customers for the province’s lumber mills in Asia, a response to trade wars and a weak housing market in the U.S. Now Mr. Coleman wants to see new markets for energy, which means building new infrastructure including liquefied natural gas terminals and pipelines to the coast. By depending on the U.S., natural gas producers in British Columbia face the additional challenge of being the farthest away from the market, increasing their shipping costs.

“A diversified market would change that and probably stabilize price both in the North American market and in the Asian market,” he said.

Two LNG terminals are being planned for Kitimat, and a third one is at an advanced planning stage, potentially transforming the B.C. coast into a busy energy export hub.

Mr. Coleman said he plans at least to hold the line, or improve, royalty terms at the front end of projects to capture long-term investment. “Exploration and development is very expensive,” he said. “So, if you can have a tax and royalty regime in your jurisdiction that attracts investment, you will get your resource developed when other jurisdictions won’t because they will have to heavy a tax regime on it.”

The steady hand is good news for industry at a time of stubbornly low gas prices and should represent insurance against royalty hikes in other places, particularly if the strategy wins popular support as the province heads into an election of its own.

Financial Post

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News Release

VICTORIA – Premier Christy Clark today announced a new, smaller cabinet focused on putting families first, creating jobs and changing the way British Columbians engage with their government.

“Our new cabinet will reflect the priorities of British Columbians and put families at the centre of all our decision-making,” said Premier Clark. “Together, we will focus on creating jobs and building a strong economy because that is the single most important thing we can do to support families and ensure we can invest in critical services like health and education. This is a team that will work hard to ensure that prosperity and opportunity extend to every region of our province.”

The new cabinet is made up of 17 ministers plus the premier, reduced from the previous total of 24. This includes the new Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation, which will bring together many of the functions in government focused on job creation under a single ministry. As well, three new cabinet committees reflect the priorities of government – the Committee on Families First; the Committee on Jobs and Economic Growth; and the Committee on Open Government and Engagement.

Responsibility for colleges and universities has been recombined under the Ministry of Advanced Education; responsibility for mining has been returned to the Ministry of Energy and Mines; Labour and Citizen Services have been combined; and Forests and Lands has been combined with Natural Resource Operations.

The new cabinet appointed and sworn into office by the Lieutenant-Governor in a ceremony today is:

· Premier – Hon. Christy Clark

· Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance – Hon. Kevin Falcon

· Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation – Hon. Mary Polak

· Minister of Advanced Education – Hon. Naomi Yamamoto

· Minister of Agriculture – Hon. Don McRae

· Attorney General – Hon. Barry Penner

· Minister of Children and Family Development – Hon. Mary McNeil

· Minister of Community, Sport and Cultural Development – Hon. Ida Chong

· Minister of Education – Hon. George Abbott

· Minister of Energy and Mines (minister responsible for Housing) – Hon. Rich Coleman

· Minister of Environment – Hon. Terry Lake

· Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations – Hon. Steve Thomson

· Minister of Health – Hon. Michael de Jong

· Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation – Hon. Pat Bell

· Minister of Labour, Citizens’ Services and Open Government – Hon. Stephanie Cadieux

· Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General – Hon. Shirley Bond

· Minister of Social Development (minister responsible for multiculturalism) – Hon. Harry Bloy

· Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure – Hon. Blair Lekstrom

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British Columbia could potentially capture a piece of the market for renewable energy in the Western United States, but it’s going to take major policy changes on both sides of the border, as well as hefty investment in transmission and generation in the province.

A white paper released earlier this month by The Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS), a B.C.-based academic research group, examined both the opportunities and risks of expanding electricity exports, as called for in the province’s 2010 Clean Energy Act.

The Clean Energy Act lays out two different types of export projects, one through the IRP process and the other through a surplus created through “self-sufficiency” requirements. The act protects ratepayers from the risk associated with the IRP process, but not from risks associated with province’s self-sufficiency requirements, the report says.

Dr. George Hoberg, from the University of British Columbia and co-author of the report, told Energy Prospects West that there are several policy gaps in the B.C. export plan.

“We need to ensure that the investments needed to build projects to export make economic sense,” Hoberg said. “We don’t have anything that requires a net-benefit test.”

The province also lacks a comprehensive land-use planning mechanism.

“How do we plan for the environmental impacts in B.C.? We do have province-wide electricity planning, but we don’t have a framework for land-use planning at the regional level that allows for the cumulative impacts of multiple projects.”

The white paper lays out six policy recommendations, including developing a revenue-sharing mechanism with local communities affected by large new energy projects.

In addition, the paper recommends that the government ensure that electricity exports do not jeopardize the reliability of domestic supply by providing guidance on setting upper limits on the proportion of B.C. electricity that can be dedicated to the export market.

The government should also require any importing jurisdiction to have meaningful demand-side management programs in place before signing an export contract.

…Still, B.C. sees a market for its renewable power, thanks to RPS requirements in states within the Western Electricity Coordinating Council’s footprint.

BC Hydro’s 2008 Long Term Acquisition Plan suggested that total renewable energy demand within WECC could reach 177,301 GWh/yr (20.2 aGW) in 2020. In 2008, 43,618 GWh/yr (5 aGW) were in service, leaving a gap in supply of renewable energy of 133,683 GWh/yr, according to BC Hydro projections.

An analysis done last year by Clean Energy B.C., a coalition of independent power producers in the province, suggested that the B.C. could capture 10 percent of the WECC market for renewables.

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Dear Mr. Abbott, Ms. Clark, Mr. de Jong, Mr. Dix, Mr. Falcon, Mr. Farnworth, Mr. Horgan, Mr. Lali, Mr. Larsen, Mr. Mayne, Mr. Simons, and Dr. Stilwell:

This winter has seen remarkable strides in worldwide leadership on combating global warming. December alone saw Japan announce an escalating carbon tax, designed to curb fossil-fuel consumption; California’s Air Resources Board voted to adopt the large-emitter cap-and-trade provision laid out in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Clean Energy Act; and Chris Huhne, Minister of Energy in the U.K., set out a four-point program that includes a national carbon tax tied to reductions in income and employment taxes.

Curbing carbon pollution and slowing global warming while putting money in people’s pockets makes obvious sense. But there are additional benefits. California’s renewable-energy sector is now growing more rapidly than any other segment of its economy, providing tens of thousands of new, well-paying jobs while broadening the tax base. In B.C., the carbon tax is stimulating capital investment and innovation that is helping to drive the GDP associated with the green economy from $15 billion in 2008 to a projected $20 to $27 billion by 2020, as much as 15 per cent of provincial output. Some 225,000 direct and indirect green jobs will be in place by 2020, up from 166,000 in 2008.

By Thomas Pedersen, Special to the Sun

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