Premier Christy Clark to attend pro LNG rally in Fort St. John

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. – There’s now confirmation that Premier Christy Clark will be the featured speaker at the rescheduled pro LNG rally at Centennial Park now set for 11.30 Wednesday morning.

Organizers, looking for placard carrying supporters to fill 100^th street all the way to 100^th avenue, also confirm, Mayor Lori Ackerman has rescheduled her travel plans and will be back from Ottawa in time to attend the People Power Rally.

She was one of several local area mayors who took their concerns about LNG industry development to the Nation’s Capital this week for meetings with Trudeau government ministers and officials.

All this comes at a time when provincial government sales of crown petroleum and natural gas rights in BC continue to produce dismal first quarter revenue results for the second economic downturn year in a row.

As the Ministry of Natural Gas Development holds its fourth monthly sale Wednesday, the year-to-date bonus bids total sits at just over $2 million.

Eighteen drilling licences covering just over 6,000 hectares are scheduled to be on offer suggesting that although the tender bonus is likely to again be low, it could top last April’s sale total.

Eleven parcels were offered then, but only four were purchased for an average price of just $80 per hectare, resulting in a tender bonus of only $214,000.

The record keeping significance of the comparison goes to the fact that this is yet another year when the Ministry could be threatened with the lowest total since 1978, the first year on its list of recorded sales.

The total for the first three months last year was only about $4.6 million, but it was more than double the comparable total this year.

Even so by year’s end, it still took a four point two million dollar sale in December, to get past the annual record low total.

With it the Ministry finished 2015 at $18.3 million and managed to slip past the $16.7 million record low total posted in 1982.