Allan Kuan -thanks for your effort. Your vision is certainly plausible over the next 50-year time frame.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jsbertram
A simple fix for our money woes:
Off Shore Drilling.
We could be the new 'blue-eyed arabs' of North America, although Alberta wouldn't willingly give up this title - some still use this as their rallying cry against 'those eastern bums and creeps'
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Not necessarily. Alberta's provincial resource revenues are derived mostly from natural gas - not oil.
But the good news is that the Montney/Horn River/Cordova Embayment tight gas/shale plays in NE BC are world class in terms of production potential and the players (Exxon Mobil, Shell, Encana, Apache, Nexen, Quicksilver, etc., etc.) with major entities from China, India, and South Korea also strategically partnering up with the majors. NE BC could potentially have the largest combined natural gas fields in North America.
And once these fields (esp. Horn River) start entering/ramping-up production post-2012, with a concurrent rise in price, BC might very well be the envy of the country in terms of being awash in $billions$ in additional annual revenue.
To put things into perspective, between 2001 and 2009,
$38 billion was invested by the natural gas industry in BC.
The BC provincial treasury took in
$17 billion in terms of royalties, land bonuses and taxes during the same time period.
In comparison, Alberta's provincial treasury raked in
$42.6 billion during the same rough time frame (2000 - 2007) from natural gas royalties, land bonuses, and taxes.
And with BC 'potentially' moving toward rivaling Alberta in terms of natural gas production in another decade or so - with that additional cash-flow it ain't too hard to figure out the financial viability of additional major transportation infrastructure.
The potentially large but relatively unexplored Bowser and Nechako basins in north central BC, as well as the Queen Charlotte basin, will be the future icing on the cake several decades down the road.