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Earlier this month, The Carbon Bubble author and former CIBC World Markets chief economist Jeff Rubin dropped by the Georgia Straight building to pour cold water on the province's liquefied-natural-gas dreams.

He explained that B.C.'s hopes took a big hit when China signed two massive deals to obtain Siberian natural gas far below the prevailaing price for LNG.

"It doesn't matter whether it's coming from B.C., Louisiana, or California," Rubin said. "It's 30 to 40 percent below that."

This week, there's even more bad news for the nascent B.C. industry.

It needs prices to average US$12 to US$13 per million British thermal units (delivered) to be viable, according to an Ernst & Young report quoting Deutsche Bank figures.

Reuters has reported that Japanese LNG import costs in May averaged only US$8.84 per million British thermal units. That's the lowest price since September 2009.

Japan imports about a third of the world's LNG, mainly because it shut down dozens of nuclear reactors following a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

What's worse is that Reuters has reported that the LNG spot prices in August in Asia fell to US$7.30 last week.

Maybe it's time for the B.C. government to do as Rubin suggests: pay less attention to cranking up the export of carbon-based fuels and get on with the business of building a long-term sustainable agricultural industry.

For more on that, check out the video below.