New report claims B.C. has much less natural gas than government claims

WATCH (above): David Hughes from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives discusses the analysis that was done for his study on the LNG industry.

While the provincial government remains bullish on its goal of three LNG terminals by 2020, a new report by the Centre for Canadian Policy Alternatives suggests the province has much less natural gas available for those terminals than anticipated.

“If B.C. goes ahead with five terminals, it would require four to five times the current B.C. gas production levels,” said David Hughes, a former federal government geoscientist, in a summary of his report, which you can read here.

“This means drilling up to 43,000 new fracked wells in the northeast by 2040, and using up to 22,000 Olympic swimming pools of water per year in the fracking process. We’re talking about serious environmental impacts.”

WATCH: Keith Baldrey on a new report highlights potential LNG road blocks. 

While the provincial government has estimated 2,933 trillion cubic feet in natural gas reserves, Hughes says the BC Oil and Gas Commission have estimated BC’s raw gas reserves at 442 trillion cubic feet. He says that if the government’s estimates don’t pan out, Canada would have to become a net importer of natural gas.

“Either you have to drive up B.C. gas production far more than the NEB reference gas, or you have to get the gas from somewhere else,” says Hughes.

READ MORE: Estimated LNG reserves double in size, says government

However, Minister of Natural Gas Development Rich Coleman says the report ignored the studies of B.C.’s own scientists.

“There’s two things I don’t believe any more. Polls, and anything written by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. They don’t do their research,” he said.

“It’s one of those reports you read and say fine…but I’m not going to buy any of this, because I know what are facts are, I know what our research is, and I know from sitting down with the companies that have been drilling what the pressure of the wells are, what they’re going to have production-wise going forward in the next 10-25 years.”