To the editor:
Christy Clark is pushing the federal government for approval of a non-existent LNG (liquid natural gas or more appropriately called liquid "fracked" gas) industry.
In 2014 Clark travelled to Malaysia to sign an LNG [agreement] with the company, PETRONAS, alias Pacific North West, alias Trans Canada Corporation.
The price of LNG has plummeted from $15 per unit to around $4 to $5 per unit. B.C. will not break even at this price.
Fortunately, B.C.'s economy is not dependant on oil and gas, such as is the case in Alberta. Approximately 100,000 people have lost their jobs in the Canadian oil patch over the last two years as prices have plunged due to a glut of oil and gas in North America.
In 2014 China and Russia signed a $440-billion LNG deal. Sealing this 30-year deal, China built 4,000 kilometres of pipeline to north eastern Russia. China will not be buying B.C. LNG. The United States, Canada's primary customer, has found vast amount of shale gas and oil, and won't need to rely on Canadian energy as much in the future.
Besides being financially unprofitable, LNG is more harmful to the environment than any other fossil fuel, including coal. In 2011 Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, released a study establishing LNG, methane gas, which leaks into the atmosphere at well sites, compressor valves along pipelines, at storage sites and during transportation.
Hydraulic fracking, which is a process of forcing vast amounts of water through the aquifer to the shale rock, contaminates surrounding ground water. Hydraulic fracking also causes earthquakes.
The BC Liberals and Pacific Northwest (PETRONAS) plan to build an LNG plant on Lelu Island near Prince Rupert and the Khutzeymateen provincial park. Khutzeymateen means "sheltered place of fish and bears." This place of the Great Bear Rain Forest is ecologically sensitive, containing trees that are 800 to 1,000 years old. In this area the water contains eelgrass which nurtures young salmon. One biologist stated this area is like "Grand Central Station" for juvenile salmon.
According to Russian scientist, they built an LNG plant on the ocean and their salmon population has been wiped out.
Our coastline of beautiful B.C. will not be beautiful anymore.
• 2015 BC Oil and Gas [Commission] confirmed hydraulic fracking caused a 4.6 magnitude earthquake near Fort St. John, BC(vicinity of Site-C dam).
• Between July 2010 and March 2013 a dozen earthquakes ranging between 1.6 and 3.4 occurred in this area of northeastern B.C.
• BC Oil and Gas and BC Hydro have been concerned.
• Stanford University, USA, published a study in the journal of Environmental Sciences and technology confirming that fracking impacts underground drinking water.
• Professional, scientific and technical workers in B.C. outnumber oil and gas workers by a ratio of 36 to one.
Judy McKee, Kelowna