LNG in BC and Jobs

I have been unhappy with the February 2013 Grant Thornton Employment Impact Review since it first saw last year before the election.   The report projects an average of 39,400 jobs per year directly, indirectly or induced from the construction phase and further 75,200 ongoing direct, indirect and induced jobs from the operation of the plants.   It bases this all on BC have five LNG plants operational by 2021 producing 82 mtpa (mtpa=million tonnes per annum) of LNG costing $98,400,000,000 to build.

These numbers are huge and need some way to test them for validity but the report does not give us the data to be able to figure out how they calculated the numbers.  The numbers have looked overly opotomistic to me from the start and I think Grant and Thornton felt the same, the final paragraph from their report reads:

We are not guarantors of the information upon which we have relied in preparing our report, and except as stated, we have not audited or otherwise attempted to verify any of the underlying information or data contained in this report.

They are saying they just used the numbers provided to them and have no idea if they are accurate.

What I would like to try and do over a number of posts is to figure out what the reality of the situation is.

Here are the questions I want to try and answer:

• Is 82 mtpa of LNG realistic from BC?
• What LNG plants are more likely to be built and when?
• What is the capital cost of the projects?
• What are the timelines of the projects?
• How many direct jobs will each plant produced?
• How many of the in direct construction related jobs will be offshore?

I am sure more will come up as I work through this, but this is a start.  If you have questions that I should try and figure out with respect to this, drop me a line or leave a comment.