Editor:
The Oct. 1 online edition of the Coast Reporter contained an article by Mr. Stefan Labbé entitled, “B.C. subsidizes oil and gas drilling in caribou habitat it’s supposed to protect: study.”
The article refers to a UBC study that “used government data obtained in a freedom-of-information request to map nearly 12,000 active oil and gas wells across the province.” Curiously, this information has always been freely available to the public from the BC Oil and Gas Commission.
The article continues to say, “more than half were run by companies that received provincial royalties over the past three years.”
After some elementary description of environmental issues mostly resolved 40 years ago, the article quotes the study’s lead researcher, Adriana DiSilvestro: “the fact that there’s oil and gas actively being subsidized on [critical habitat] is really contradictory to a lot of the conservation goals that B.C. has with regard to caribou.”
Ms. DiSilvestro and Mr. Labbé would appear to believe that royalties are paid to oil and gas companies by the B.C. government. They are mistaken. Oil and gas companies pay royalties and taxes, they do not receive them.
According to Merriam-Webster, a subsidy is “a grant or gift of money: such as … a grant by a government to a private person or company to assist an enterprise deemed advantageous to the public.”
Note the direction of cash flow for a subsidy: from government to a company. The BC Deep Well Royalty Credit, however, is a program to permit companies to somewhat reduce their royalties payable by a portion of their funds they expend to drill government-specified types of wells.
Ironically, the type of wells that qualify for this royalty credit are specifically those that reduce the surface footprint of drilling in sensitive areas: deep wells and extended-reach horizontal and multi-lateral wells.
The BC Deep Well Royalty Credit program results in no money being given to oil and gas companies; ergo, it provides no subsidies.
It would be nice if those practising journalism actually understood the meanings of the words they use.
Richard Corbet, P.Eng., Sechelt
