British Columbia has a large, growing supply of natural gas to support economic growth for decades to come, contrary to a report released recently by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), which used incomplete data.
Today, British Columbia has almost 3,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas available. In technical terms, this is known as the gas-in-place.
However, the author of the CCPA report (A Clear Look at BC LNG: Energy Security, Environmental Implications and Economic Potential) refers to “gas reserves,” which is a subset of gas-in-place.
Technically, gas reserves are estimated at 42.3 trillion cubic feet. This is the recoverable portion of British Columbia’s total resource base at a certain time, and to suggest it is the total gas-in-place misrepresents the facts.
British Columbia’s gas-in-place today is almost 3,000 trillion cubic feet, an estimate derived from a geological assessment by the provincial government, the BC Oil and Gas Commission and Canada’s National Energy Board. Using a conservative estimate, if industry recovered 30% of the gas-in-place over the long term, it would harvest well over 800 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which is about 20 times more natural gas than the recent CCPA report suggests.
That’s a substantial amount of gas when you consider only 1.5 trillion cubic feet was produced in the province last year.
Just a decade ago, British Columbia was on the verge of reaching peak production from conventional natural gas sources and technology could only recover some of the total available gas. Shale gas – also known as an unconventional gas – was underground in abundance, but it was inaccessible.
With the advent of new technology, industry is able to recover much more gas than it could decades ago. Over time, we have put strict rules in place to govern industry and ensure it is rigorously monitored and as safe as possible.
Now, some of the world’s most promising resource areas are found in B.C. That’s why the province is at the forefront of building a new liquefied natural gas industry.
Large, global companies are proposing to invest billions of dollars in B.C. because our long-term energy prospects are good, with a vast supply of natural gas to sustain exploration and energy trade for hundreds of years – unlike the bleak outlook implied by the aforementioned CCPA report.•
Rich Coleman is B.C.’s minister of natural gas development.
