VANCOUVER—Amid jubilation and back-patting over the massive liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant announced Tuesday for Kitimat, B.C., several economists are throwing cold water on the idea that a provincewide industry boom is on the way.

B.C. Premier John Horgan and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were all smiles as they praised the four companies behind the LNG Canada facility and its supply pipeline. Both politicians lauded the major energy investment, having received months of criticism for their handling of the delayed Trans Mountain pipeline.

The BC Liberals took issue with the congratulatory mood, pointing out that the province’s environment minister previously called an LNG boom “a cloud of pixie dust.” It’s ex-premier Christy Clark’s government investing in and pushing for the industry, said MLA Ellis Ross in a statement, that should get credit for the final decision.

Three economists StarMetro interviewed disputed whether it’s politicians who actually deserve the effusive praise they’re giving themselves.

Such claims should be taken with a big grain of salt, argues a Houston economist and the senior director of the Center for Energy Studies.

“That’s just politics,” said Kenneth Medlock, also Rice University’s Baker Fellow in Energy and Resource Economics, in a phone interview. “Politicians like to take credit for things that are good and they like to shift blame for things that go bad.

“An investment like this only happens if there’s commercial viability; that’s the only way it happens. Where government plays a role is it can smooth pathways through rights of way, local bylaws and First Nations negotiations.”

The sentiment was echoed by economist Werner Antweiler, director of the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business Prediction Markets, who said if there’s credit to be assigned, it’s shared.

“The previous government started it, the current government kept going,” Antweiler said in a phone interview. “Although arguably governments have been bending over backwards to bring LNG to B.C. — making major concessions on taxation and the carbon tax to make it an attractive location — the simple fact is it’s just economics.”

The federal and provincial governments say the LNG Canada plant and pipeline should cost around $40 billion and will create up to 10,000 construction jobs and 950 long-term jobs after that.

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives senior economist Marc Lee questioned the headlines touting that figure, however. He pointed out that $40 billion is the maximum estimate in the proponent’s government applications — it could be just over half that in the end — and much of that money will be spent elsewhere.

Additionally, Lee said, the firms behind the project — Royal Dutch Shell, Petroliam Nasional, Mitsubishi, PetroChina and Korea Gas — have only committed to the first of several phases.

“They’re cherry-picking the numbers to make it look better than it might be,” Lee said. “No one’s fact-checked $40 billion in the headlines. That’s the highest estimate of construction costs, but there was a $25- to $45-billion range in their application for both phases of their project.

“But the consortium has only signed off on Phase 1. It’s $13 to $21 billion. That’s half the headline numbers, and of that only 20 per cent of that investment will actually be in B.C.”

A bigger concern, Lee said, is that other B.C. industries may have to pay the price of the province blowing its carbon-emissions targets.

The government insists it can keep its climate promises, but if it adopts sector-by-sector emissions limits, Lee worries forestry, mining and other industries “will have to tighten their belts faster and tighter — that is significant — and adding 3.5 million tonnes of CO2 every year … basically means all our efforts to reduce emissions so far will be wiped out.”

The main economic factors behind the decision, Medlock suggested, were an increase in product price and the fact that “there’s a lot more gas now in North America than most people thought there would be,” making long-term exports suddenly viable.

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“Then you layer on top of that the more-rapid-than-expected demand growth we’ve witnessed in China, particularly over the last 1.5 years. They’ve been basically buying up everything they could get their hands on … particularly along the coastal regions of China, where Russian gas can’t actually reach.”

Although the BC Liberals’ Ross attacked the NDP for the years spent mocking their “100,000 jobs” LNG boom, that doesn’t exactly vindicate the previous administration, experts agreed.

In fact, Medlock predicted in a July 2016 phone interview that the global market could handle probably only a single large LNG project in B.C. At that time, he called the BC Liberals’ hopes for a multiple-plant gas boom “a pipe dream.”

But one plant here was always in the cards. Whether B.C. could beat rival LNG hopefuls in Baja, Mexico and in Australia scrambling to meet Asian demand remained in question.

“It became a race to who moves first,” he said.

Though one B.C. project finally saw the light of day, it doesn’t mean that a larger boom is coming, he cautioned.

“The design is suitable for some expansion, and the brown-field cost of expanding is lower,” he noted. “So you’ll do that before you see any new opportunities.

“But there are probably still just two viable West Coast locations.”

Antweiler agreed, saying current LNG prices are “basically just below the break-even point,” so companies are scared to go solo.

“It’s only the constellation of companies coming together that made it conceivable,” he said. “In the end it’s very good for Kitimat and gives a needed temporary boost to that region.

“But I don’t think there’s a whole lot of LNG to expand beyond this single project.”

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