Politics and plans that got most everything wrong led to LNG protests – by Terry Glavin (National Post – January 10, 2019)

https://nationalpost.com/

Blame those obstreperous Wet’suwet’en people all you like, but it was governments avoiding tough questions that caused this mess

There may be no right way to do fossil-fuel megaprojects at all anymore if we’re going to have a hope in hell of meeting our 2015 Paris climate accord commitments, but as far as the massive LNG Canada Kitimat plant and pipeline project goes — with the showdown this week on a remote British Columbia back road that immediately escalated into protests and marches and sit-ins across the country — the politics, promises and planning seem to have gotten just about everything wrong.

You could start with the way Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cheered LNG Canada’s announcement last October that the green light LNG got from B.C.’s NDP government meant full steam ahead for its long-planned $40-billion project, which is to include a new pipeline from Dawson Creek in the Peace River country to a liquefaction plant and export facility at Kitimat on the B.C. coast.

“Today’s announcement by LNG Canada represents the single largest private-sector investment project in Canadian history,” Trudeau said. “It is a vote of confidence in a country that recognizes the need to develop our energy in a way that takes the environment into account, and that works in meaningful partnership with Indigenous people.”

A closer look at the LNG Canada consortium shows a lot less in the way of private-sector investment than you might think. Royal Dutch Shell and Mitsubishi are private companies, but the other partners in the consortium aren’t.

The Malaysian government owns Petronas. Petro-China is the listed arm of the Chinese government’s China National Petroleum Corporation. And the South Korean government own the Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS).

For the rest of this article: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/terry-glavin-politics-and-plans-that-got-most-everything-wrong-led-to-lng-protests