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He attributed the delay to industry players wanting more time to review the province’s proposals.

For sure, proponents will be driving a hard bargain, particularly with the U.S. recently emerging as an attractive competitor to B.C. LNG.

But their hesitation has to do with the province’s high costs and multiple taxes, some of them associated with Premier Christy Clark’s goal to produce the cleanest LNG in the world, said industry observers.

“The entire fiscal package and cost burden needs to be considered when making a financial decision,” said Geoff Morrison, B.C. manager for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. “Clarity and certainty and transparency are good, but getting it right is also important.”

To start with, proponents are facing provincial royalties for producing natural gas as well as corporate taxes.

Then there is the new LNG or prosperity tax, whose formula has yet to be made public but which is expected to grow a $100-billion prosperity fund for the province.

Rich Coleman, B.C.’s minister of natural gas development, said last November the tax would likely involve a percentage of revenue or profit that would protect LNG owners from commodity price fluctuations, but also ensure the province benefits from the sale of its resource.

There’s B.C.’s carbon tax, the highest on the continent at $30-a-ton of greenhouse gases.

Unlike Alberta’s carbon tax of $15 per ton charged to companies that emit more than 100,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases a year, B.C.’s carbon tax applies to all combusted emissions. As designed, it would apply to LNG plants – and they require a lot of energy to cool gas into liquid form.