The Liberal opposition in the British Columbia parliament have asked the NDR government to make public its agreement with the consortium that will build and operate the first LNG complex in Canada.
The Vancouver Sun reports the Liberals had accused the government of John Horgan of being non-transparent about its dealings with the consortium, since the agreement it is currently negotiating will likely be binding for future governments as well as the current one.
"What has this government promised in exchange for the decision to proceed, and how long have they promised it for?" one Liberal MP, Mike de Jong, asked. "It may be eminently defensible, but surely people are entitled to know," he added.
The five companies behind the US$31 billion (C$40 billion) LNG Canada project made the final investment decision on the project earlier this month, ending months of uncertainty and worry that the large-scale project could become the second failed LNG initiative in British Columbia.
LNG Canada is a project of Shell, with a 40-percent stake, Malaysia's Petronas with 25 percent, PetroChina with 15 percent, Mitsubishi with 15 percent, and South Korea's Kogas with 5 percent. The facility is expected to become operational before 2025 and will initially have two liquefaction trains, each with a capacity of 6.5 million tons of LNG with the prospect of adding another two trains at a later stage for a total capacity of 26 million tons of LNG.
The B.C. government, according to its Finance Minister, is currently in the process of finalizing the part of the agreement regarding payments, and as quoted by the Vancouver Sun, Carole James said, "Basically, it will just align the payments and pieces they pay back. We're working through that piece and as we've done with the four (additional LNG) agreements, those have been out since March, we'll release all the information."
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. More