A group critical of British Columbia's production estimates from a proposed liquefied natural gas industry claims that ramping up gas drilling could jeopardize Canada's energy security and turn it into a net importer within a decade.

In a report released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, geoscientist David Hughes concluded that the five LNG export terminals the province hopes to establish would consume four times B.C.'s current proven gas reserves. Even a middle estimate of three terminals would require 3½ times the province's current proven reserves.

And the 12 export LNG export licenses approved by the National Energy Board, which are supposed to represent supplies in excess of domestic needs, outstrip the agency's own estimates for gas available for export.

"It's likely we're going to need those reserves (domestically), and it's pretty clear Canada doesn't have a plan," Hughes said in an interview.

"The only national strategy on energy in Canada is how to liquidate it as quick as possible and sell it in the name of the immediate economy."

None of the dozen proponents with LNG export proposals from B.C. has made a decision to go ahead with construction of a plant. However, the CCPA is releasing the report a week after Malaysia's state-owned firm Petronas, key backer of a multi-billion export proposal for Prince Rupert, said it is willing to make a preliminary decision within weeks.

Minister of Natural Gas Development Rich Coleman did not make himself available for an interview ahead of the report's release, but in an emailed statement repeated the claim B.C. has "a vast supply of natural gas" for both domestic and export demands stretching 150 years.

He said the B.C. Oil Gas Commission has developed a forecast that estimates supply needed for up to five export terminals. That forecast would see plants exporting 82 million tonnes of super-cooled liquid gas per year, requiring about 12 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day (requiring production of 15 BCF/day, due to losses in the conversion of raw gas to marketable gas).

However, Hughes said the figure of B.C.'s potential resources stated on a website by Coleman's ministry appear to conflict with estimates published by the B.C.

Oil Gas Commission.

On the LNG in B.C. website, the government states the province has up to 2,933 trillion cubic feet of gas, which is 70 times more than B.C.'s 42 trillion cubic feet of proven reserves reported in the Oil Gas Commissions' 2013 estimate of hydrocarbon reserves. It also exceeds B.C.'s 442 trillion cubic feet in lesscertain estimated gas resources, the Oil Gas Commission said in the same report.

"It would seem to me to contradict the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission and NEB (estimates) by a factor of six," Hughes, a former geoscientist with the Geological Survey of Canada, where he specialized in studying unconventional oil and gas production. Hughes analyzed estimates for the natural gas production needed to feed between one and five of the LNG plants being proposed compared with supply forecasts from the Oil Gas Commission and NEB.