Foot off the gas

Of more immediate concern – and the subject of much of the remainder of this paper – is what the province is doing by way of encouraging Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – BC Office natural gas developments in the province’s northeast region, where the bulk of BC’s proven oil and gas reserves are and where the vast majority of fossil fuels are currently exploited. [...] This will lead to an “increase in the amount of natural gas reserves that can be produced from a well.”7 The same report goes on to note that thanks to “high commodity prices, and an improved investment climate created by improved policies and regulatory streamlining,” the provincial treasury benefited to the tune of $3 billion in the 200 –2006 fiscal year. Nowhere in the report is the word “subs [...] The industry, predominantly at play in the northeast quarter of the province, has in recent years eclipsed the forest industry in terms of the royalties it generates. [...] As the company noted in a 2003 press release contend that, in the absence of announcing its payment of $369 million to the BC government for the rights to drill between 100 and 200 government assistance, some drilling new natural gas wells per year in the Cutbank Ridge area operations are less profitable and near Dawson Creek, “We applaud the government for improving the investment climate through [...] According to preliminary data from Environment Canada, the total greenhouse gas emissions from BC were 6 .7 million tonnes in 200 .3 That same year, the CO2 released by the energy industry in the northeast of the province as a result of ignited or wasted gas was .6 million tonnes, or 13.1 per cent of the total.