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In mid-March, the government passed an amendment to the Petroleum and Natural Gas Act. Ministry of Finance officials say the new “confidentiality” provision prevents them from disclosing what individual fossil fuel companies pay in royalties.

If this stands, British Columbians of all political leanings ought to worry.

Why? Because you and I and everyone else in the province own our natural resources, including natural gas. We are entitled to a share of their value and the royalties paid by fossil fuel companies reflect that reality. For that reason, all British Columbians deserve transparency about how royalty fees are calculated and what is actually paid.

Companies like Shell gain access to our fossil fuel resources when our government sells them “subsurface rights”. After those sales, companies may produce natural gas and other fossil fuels by drilling and fracking them from the ground. But once they do so, they must pay royalties on what they extract. Those royalties then help the provincial government pay for a very tiny portion of our health, education and other public service costs.

I say tiny because the public benefits derived from those royalties are dropping faster than a stone through water.

In fiscal year 2008, according to the “upstream development division” of B.C.’s Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, British Columbians received $1.16 billion in royalty revenues. By 2017, however, revenues had fallen nearly 90 per cent to $147 million. Yet over that same time, natural gas production shot up 72 per cent and production of gas liquids such as condensate entered the stratosphere, climbing by 250 per cent. Virtually all of the increased output was piped east to Alberta’s oil sands industry.