Following is an item contributed by an In-Sights reader who chooses to be known as “Anonymous.”
Most people are unlikely to remember the following… from J. Wellington Wimpy
“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”
I’m old, so I remember.
Again, sensing the usefulness of predicting disaster (cue organist) … unless … Royal Dutch Shell’s “I-See-The-Future!” tea leaves gambit continues… with help from (cue organist) a Globe and Mail puff piece:
Shell warns about global LNG shortage… someday… maybe
Royal Dutch Shell PLC is warning about the potential for a worldwide shortage of liquefied natural gas in the mid-2020s as Ottawa mulls whether to lend a hand to a stalled Shell-led project in British Columbia.
Hurry! Supplies Limited! Buy now before it’s too late!
Is that what Ottawa does? Mulls?
Is that potential risk of missing the brass ring the only variable in play? Not price? Not cost of shipping? Not cut-throat competition from other players? Not ever-cheaper alternate forms of non-polluting energy?
Exactly how does Shell’s hallucination constitute a verifiable shortage? Is Shell’s near-certainty a prediction of profit which guarantees an investor huge rewards for blind-faith investing? Or is it another barrage of PR bluffing?
But look: isn’t pleading for charity sweet?
What a picture. A helpless conglomerate of enfeebled oily grandmothers needs a hand to help them cross a busy intersection. Who better to ask for billions more in subsidies to assist them to the other side – today – than a federal government which just can’t say no to mega-project subsidies? Who expected years of IBM’s dysfunctional Phoenix Payroll System? Who welcomes determined willingness to supply perpetual bailouts to Ottawa-friendly SNC\Lavalin and Bombardier?
Despite the absence of Princess Enron here, again, BC’s LNG future is depicted as a brilliant opportunity to cash in… if only… [insert demand for more kowtowing and subsidies]..
It reads like this..
Shell’s outlook for a tightened global LNG market is widely expected to boost the chances for the LNG Canada project to be built in Kitimat, said Dan Tsubouchi, chief market strategist at Stream Asset Financial Management LP. But a tax obstacle remains – the federal Finance Department must decide whether to grant an exemption to LNG Canada on anti-dumping duties imposed against imports of fabricated industrial steel components.
…Shell executive Steve Hill said during a webcast that energy companies must step up soon and prepare to construct LNG export terminals in order to catch the next wave of development.
“We’re starting to see some of the building blocks and some of the intent being put in place,” said Mr. Hill, the Singapore-based executive vice-president at Shell Energy, a division of the Anglo-Dutch energy giant. But he cautioned there is a risk that LNG supply won’t keep pace with demand, “and that’s why we’ve flagged it.”
The prospect of the world’s LNG market going from a glut of supplies last year to a shortage in 2024 opens a window of opportunity for Shell, which owns 50 per cent of the LNG Canada joint venture planned for Kitimat in northern British Columbia. If the consortium decides to forge ahead in late 2018, construction would be completed in late 2023 – in time to meet the expected need for fresh supplies.
How much more governmental pandering and corporate fiction peddling will it take before it’s obvious that modern western governments are considered reliably obtuse cash cows ripe for continuous exploitation by self-evangelizing mega-corporations?
Categories: LNG
in-sights.ca 
the opening line was great! loved the line, I do remember it well and yes that is what the B.C. Lieberals and B.C. Hydro were/are all about. The problem is they won’t tell us what Tuesday. Is it this coming Tuesday, next Tuesday, a Tuesday in 20 years, 50 years, etc.?
Whatever Shell has to say, take with a very large dose of salt. Most simply think of it as Shell Oil, but its Royal Dutch Shell and they are into all sorts of things/businesses. They have been around for a very long time, survived all sorts of disasters, governments, etc. They are all about the money and aren’t too interested in any one else’s interests. It isn’t just about the oil. its all about their corporate life span, which goes for a very long, long time.
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its a P3 so it would be top secret?
its not about the resoure its about the tax breaks you can squeeze out?
privitize profits..socialize debt.?
Play the long game Canada Play the looong game.
Never truat a politician.you dont know what their agenda is?
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The LNG deal will be done in secret, last for 30 years, and the terms kept from public view to protect commercial interests. Proof?
Part 1
http://www.pentictonherald.ca/news/article_a947fe6c-1b21-11e8-9f13-5308f904af18.html
Part 2
http://www.pentictonherald.ca/news/article_eb5b7390-1bdc-11e8-9344-77d0aca33082.html
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“…the federal Finance Department must decide whether to grant an exemption to LNG Canada on anti-dumping duties…”
Still waiting to hear which way the sword fell on the BC Rail taxes: Did we give it away for free?
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If BC has lots of natural gas, why not run our vehicles with it, rather than exporting it as LNG?
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like use it for burrard thermal -nat gas without compression cost..but BCLiberals forbade that option.?
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I, for the life of me, can’t understand why would anybody think of building a pipe line to this west coast, to an expensive to build LNG processing plant, which consumes a hugh amounts of energy, ship the product across an ocean, to another expensive LNG processing plant, which uses another hugh amounts of energy, and then pipe it to their customers. Russia has ten times the amount of natural gas as all of Canada has. All the Russians have to do is build the pipe, stick the natural gas into said pipe with no expensive LNG processing plants with no ships or ship loading facilities and send it to their customers. Simple. Norway is piping natural gas right now from the west coast of Norway through the North Sea, by-passing the east coast of Scotland, to the northeast coast of England.
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At this rate John Horgan will have to hire an LNG advocate.
There’s one I can think of with recent experience, but something tells me his curriculum vitae is a tad problematic.
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Oh how history repeats itself. What is happening now with the energy industry is the same as what occured with end of the bronze age. The bronze age was completly absorbed by kings and queens and all the way down to the luckless peasant/slave, who dug the tin and copper. Then came along iron. The whole bronze age hierarchal system fought this new fangled metal and wouldn’t have anything to do with it because bronze made them for what they were. Well, we know our history and iron became the metal to have. We are now in that same transition oil/gas industry as what happened with bronze and iron.
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Change is always resisted.
When Catherine de Medici introduced the fork to France in the 16th century, churchmen called it, “An instrument of the devil.”
———————————–
Charles Simic, “The Fork”:
This strange thing must have crept
Right out of hell.
It resembles a bird’s foot
Worn around the cannibal’s neck.
As you hold it in your hand,
As you stab with it into a piece of meat,
It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:
Its head which like your fist
Is large, bald, beakless, and blind.
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when are our elected officials, and I might add “I have no idea why” , wake up to the obvious. The fossil fuell era has gone like the coal era. Quit milking us for the last drop and move on.
Bob
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