Region: British Columbia
Weekend Reading 3/31/17
Alan At this week’s staff meeting, we were discussing the relentless rains this winter in Cascadia and wondering if it was a record (days of rain? Inches of rain? Days without sun? etc.) So the staff decided to do some digging and compiled what we’ve found in this week’s weekend reading. Seattle has had few … Read more
Listen In: BC’s LNG Ambitions
On Tuesday, Sightline senior research associate Tarika Powell joined KBAI’s Joe Teehan to discuss her latest report detailing the 20 liquefied natural gas projects proposed for the shores of British Columbia. The projects would stretch from the Salish Sea in the south to Stewart, BC, in the north, with major hubs at Kitimat and Prince … Read more
BC Wants to Produce Four Times as Much LNG as World’s Largest Exporter
Even now that Shell has announced its decision to discontinue further development on the Prince Rupert LNG project, there are still nineteen LNG export proposals pending in British Columbia. Five of the proposals are on the Salish Sea, four are clustered at Kitimat, six near Prince Rupert, and another four are proposed north of Prince … Read more
BC’s ‘Wild West of Political Cash’ Fuels a Fossil Fuel Frenzy
“The wild west of Canadian political cash.” That’s what the New York Times called British Columbia in a January 2017 investigation into the province’s extremely permissive rules governing campaign donations. Now, a new report by a trio of researchers at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) shines a light on fossil fuel political spending … Read more
A Victory for Coal Mine Cleanup
The tsunami of bankruptcies that overwhelmed the US coal industry over the past two years has largely subsided—but it left an unprecedented path of financial wreckage in its wake, wiping out shareholders, decimating balance sheets, and stranding billions of dollars in loans that will never be repaid. There’s been an unexpected upside to this financial chaos, however: an … Read more
Maps: The 20 LNG Proposals Vying for BC’s Shores
For immediate release: March 8, 2017 Contact: Tarika Powell, tarika@sightline.org, 206-447-1880 x109 Even as BC’s LNG ‘gold rush’ goes bust, these 20 proposed projects still want in New report maps the would-be LNG exporters lured by the province’s promises of support. Over the past several years, British Columbia has seen an onslaught of proposals for … Read more
Maps: The 16 LNG Proposals Vying for BC’s Shores
Editor’s note: The report below is an updated version of the original report published in March 2017. Since this report was first published, four BC liquefied natural gas projects have been cancelled. Sixteen LNG proposals are still standing—but most of them are standing still. Over the past few years, Oregon and Washington fended off several … Read more
Liquefied Natural Gas: Coming to a Rail Line Near You?
Already besieged by explosive oil trains and polluting coal trains, rail-line communities in the Pacific Northwest may soon face a new vexation: mile-long trains hauling liquefied natural gas (LNG). It’s thanks to a little-known experiment taking place in Alaska, under test conditions that bear little resemblance to realities in Cascadia. The first LNG-by-rail shipment For … Read more
Cloud Peak Retreats from Coal Exports
In another sign of the collapsing prospects for West Coast coal exports, Cloud Peak Energy—one of the largest coal producers in the American West and the best positioned coal exporter in the vast Powder River Basin—recently announced that it had extricated itself from long-term contracts to move coal into Pacific Rim markets. It was a costly … Read more