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Image: LNG Canada An LNG industry in B.C. may not be the $100 billion bonanza that former premier Christy Clark once promised. But even a single LNG project — LNG Canada — is expected to bring in $22 billion for the B.C. government over a 40-year period. That’s despite the BC NDP government’s scrapping $6 billion worth of special LNG taxes, and continuing to offer deep well credits to oil and gas companies, which allows them to write off some of their drilling expenses, thus lowering the royalties the government would otherwise collect. David Austin, a lawyer specializing in energy for Stirling LLP, said the B.C. government’s numbers just don’t add up. Austin said he suspects the government is downplaying the amount of increased natural gas production that the $40 billion LNG Canada project will generate, because downplaying it makes it easier to fit LNG Canada into its climate action targets. He added it’s likely the LNG Canada plant will generate a lot more natural gas production in B.C. than the government is predicting. “It’s highly unlikely the calculation of $22 billion in revenues to the provincial government will be correct if there’s only a 60% incremental increase in […]
