Abstract
Shale gas extraction via hydraulic fracturing has been a controversial issue in many countries. In Canada, the provincial government of British Columbia (BC) has made relentless efforts on developing a liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry targeting potential Asian importers, which has been a heatedly debated public controversy since late 2011. Focusing on the two contending discourse coalitions formed by this policy initiative’s supporters and opponents, respectively, this article explores the intricate economic, political, and ideological struggles underlying Canadian extractivism. A qualitative discourse analysis of related stakeholder communications reveals that the pro-LNG coalition led by the BC Liberal government developed a “progressive extractivism” storyline to frame LNG exports as an unprecedented and ethical economic opportunity deserving the political support of environmentally minded British Columbians. By contrast, the anti-LNG coalition formed by progressive civil organizations, Indigenous groups, and concerned citizens engaged in fierce discursive resistance, notably via (a) adopting mainstream economic knowledge to highlight the fragile economic basis of BC LNG and (b) incorporating potent political issues such as democratic governance and reconciliation to expand public debates beyond the “jobs versus the environment” dichotomy.
Introduction
Shale gas extraction via hydraulic fracturing (hereafter as “fracking”) has drawn widespread scholarly and public attention over the past decade. The scale of this practice has steadily grown in many regions across North America, which has cast a harsh spotlight on the oil and gas industry’s economic, social, and environmental impacts. For instance, in British Columbia (BC)—Canada’s westernmost province—the provincial government has made relentless pushes for developing a liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry since late 2011, in which the previously unrecoverable shale gas reserves in the BC interior region will be extracted via fracking, transported to coastal LNG terminals, and then exported to swiftly growing Asian markets, notably Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and India (BC Ministry of Energy and Mines, 2012; Chen & Gunster, 2016; Lee, 2014a). The former BC Premier Christy Clark was so devoted to this policy initiative that not only did she made it the pillar of the BC Liberal Party’s economic platform during the 40th (2013) provincial election, her government also established a stand-alone ministry of LNG development dedicated to attracting investment from domestic and oversea energy firms and negotiating LNG deals with Asian importers. During 2012–2014, when industry stakeholders proposed up to 20 LNG projects, government propaganda kept teasing the BC public with forthcoming LNG revenues and job opportunities.
Nevertheless, the BC Liberal government’s pursuit of LNG development turned out to be a short-lived hype. Despite concerted efforts by the Clark cabinet, fossil fuel advocates, and grassroots supporters, the LNG agenda was caught up in a gridlock after mid-2014. This “epic failure” (Rankin & McElroy, 2017) in fulfilling election promises generated a furious public backlash. In mid-2017, the BC Liberal Party lost its majority status in the 41st provincial election and was subsequently toppled by BC New Democratic Party (NDP) and BC Green Party. Since then, although the BC NDP minority government has inherited the LNG agenda and continued to promote it among potential investors, the outcomes have been disappointing to many BC LNG proponents: As of 2019, only two LNG projects (Woodfibre LNG and LNG Canada) advanced to the construction stage, yet their completion dates remained highly uncertain due to global economic downturn. Once promised as a generational opportunity to bring “a possible $1 trillion in cumulative GDP benefit per year to provincial economy” (The Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, 2013, p. 8), BC’s LNG initiative ends up being one of the high-profile economic and political miscalculations in recent Canadian history.
Compared with the existing communication scholarship on Alberta’s bitumen industry, BC LNG presents a less studied yet equally important energy controversy for empirical research. Unlike fracking controversies in the United States and Europe where political debates tend to evolve around a persistent “jobs versus the environment” dichotomy polarizing supporters and opponents (see Bomberg, 2017; Dodge & Lee, 2017; Matthews & Hansen, 2018; Metze, 2017), stakeholder communications concerning BC LNG signal a notable discursive shift in Canadian energy politics. Specifically, not only have LNG supporters promoted fracking as an ideal solution for revitalizing local economies across rural BC, they have also proactively framing shale gas as an ethical and sustainable “bridge fuel” that would reduce Asian countries’ greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At the same time, concerned citizens and non-governmental organizations have opposed the LNG initiative due to the environmental threats posed by fracking, gas pipelines, and LNG terminals. Notably, their oppositional discourses have adopted analyses by energy consultancies to dispute the business model of trans-Pacific LNG trade. Taken together, BC LNG’s departure from conventional “jobs versus the environment” narratives presents an excellent opportunity for exploring the ongoing political contests over extractivism in Canada as well as economics-oriented discourses’ potential contribution to environmental advocacy (Luxon, 2019).
Thus, the main purpose of this study is to explore how the social meanings associated with shale gas shifted in BC LNG debates during the tenure of the Christy Clark government (2011–2017). In light of this, the study empirically analyzes the contested public narratives between LNG supporters and opponents by attending to the following research questions:
To answer these questions, I conducted a qualitative discourse analysis of public texts produced by BC LNG’s major stakeholders (see Table 2). I adopted Maarten Hajer’s (1995, 2005) “argumentative discourse analysis” (ADA) as the principal methodological framework to guide the analysis. In the next section, the elaboration of the case study begins with a brief summary of previous research on fracking and the ADA framework.
Literature Review
Previous Scholarship on Fracking
Shale gas refers to methane deposits within shale rock formations. This unconventional type of gas reserves was not economically obtainable until the early 2000s, when the low permeability of shale was solved by innovations in drilling technologies, namely, the combination of horizontal drilling and fracking. The prevalence of shale gas extraction has dramatically boosted the world’s estimated recoverable gas. Take North America as an example. According to the estimation of Howarth et al. (2011), the application of fracking boosts the technically recoverable gas reserves of the United States from 7.7 to 24.4 trillion m3. For Canada, the increase is from 1.8 to 11 trillion m3, respectively.
Despite the enormous economic potential of fracking, this practice has been strongly opposed by environmentalists as well as residents living in fracking zones. Specifically, fracking comes with the following environmental impacts. To begin with, it is an extremely hydro-intensive process and a serious threat to underground water safety. A 2015 U.S. geological survey found that “oil and natural gas fracking, on average, uses more than 28 times the water it did 15 years ago, gulping up to 9.6 million gallons of water per well” (as cited in Magill, 2015, para. 1). As the opening of shale formation is achieved with the use of chemicals and proppants—many of which are proprietary and hidden from the public right to know (Wylie, 2018)—fracking also puts many communities’ drinking sources at risk. Meanwhile, fracking also raises scholarly and public concerns about increasing seismic risk. In Oklahoma, for instance, scientific research identifies a positive correlation between an unusual surge of earthquakes and expanding fracking operations (Keranen et al., 2014; Kuchment, 2019).
More crucially, compared with conventional natural gas production, fracking dramatically increases the severity of methane leakage. Howarth et al. (2011) estimate that “methane emissions [from fracking] are at least 30% more than and perhaps more than twice as great as those from conventional gas” (p. 679). Considering that there are approximate 2.5 million fracked wells worldwide—with the United States having 1.1 million of them (Montgomery & Smith, 2010)—the amount of methane leaking from these wells completely offsets the moderate environmental benefits of burning natural gas instead of coal. Accordingly, critics such as Howarth (2014) and Nikiforuk (2015) deem shale gas as a major threat to climate change mitigation.
These environmental criticisms, however, do not prevent the oil and gas industry from advocating shale gas as a revolutionary opportunity and urging further deregulation for drilling practices. Rhetorically, two claims are at the center of shale gas propaganda. First, energy conglomerates and some government regulators make the case that fracking is a mature drilling technique with decades of proven safety records. Another claim pervading concerted government and industry propaganda promoting the shale gas boom is the proposal of natural gas as a bridge fuel in the transition to low-carbon and eventually renewable energy systems. Yet, further inquiries into both claims reveal their inaccuracy. Although the U.S. Department of Energy had demonstrated the viability of massive-scale fracking during the 1970s, it was not widely recognized by producers until 1998, when George Mitchell, a Texas oilman, found means to significantly lower the average cost of a fracking operation (Wylie, 2018). Thus, it is only in the last decade or two that fracking has become widespread as a means of facilitating the extraction of natural gas. Meanwhile, despite the “bridge fuel” label’s prevalence in public discourse, its validity has been repeatedly challenged within scholarly discussions. Focusing on the potential climate impacts of BC LNG, Stephenson et al. (2012) argue that it is highly problematic to consider shale gas as clean energy because factors affecting its life cycle emissions are “poorly characterized and remain contested in the academic literature” (p. 452). A recent report by Oil Change International (Stockman et al., 2019) makes a similar argument that “the myth of gas as a ‘bridge’ to a stable climate does not stand up to scrutiny” (p. 18).
As fracking turned into a complicated and controversial issue for policy makers and other relevant stakeholders, the growing public awareness of it encountered conflicting stakeholder opinions, expert claims, and news stories. Like other environmental controversies, public contests over fracking are value-driven conflicts wherein a wide range of stakeholders seek to negotiate the public meanings of fracking through the framing of facts and counter-facts. Consequently, the public interpret uncertainties about fracking in different ways. Notably, increasing the public’s knowledge about fracking has little impacts on their beliefs about shale gas developments. As found in public surveys conducted in the United States (Evensen & Stedman, 2017) and the United Kingdom (Howell, 2018), respondents held polarized views on fracking, and more importantly, their general values and beliefs—such as those about environmental protection, local community, and political identification—precede the formation of their specific attitudes toward fracking. Thus, fracking is not purely a technological problem which can be resolved with more scientific analysis; it is also a communicative problem consisting of definitional and interpretive struggles (Matthews & Hansen, 2018; Metze & Dodge, 2016), which challenges the dominant “information deficit” model (Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002) in environmental policy making.
In communication and media studies, recent research on fracking communications has focused on how their intensifying politicization is shaped by each country’s political and economic context and respective discursive dynamics. For instance, Metze’s (2017) analysis of shale gas debates in the Netherlands has demonstrated how the transformation of public understanding of fracking from an acceptable drilling practice to an alarming environmental threat hinged on the discursive strategies adopted by opponents, which emphasized the many uncertainties underlying fracking’s economic benefits and environmental impacts. Driven by such a shift in public understanding, the Dutch government took a cautious approach and issued policies which frame fracking as a planning issue. Like the Netherlands case, by expanding the scope of fracking conversations, environmental organizations and concerned citizens in New York and the United Kingdom effectively challenged the “economic opportunity” storyline used by fracking advocates (Bomberg, 2017; Dodge & Lee, 2017).
Notably, opponents’ interpretation of fracking in relation to public health and local democracy issues opened alternative discursive spaces to accommodate citizens’ own experiences and voices. Admittedly, not all struggles against fracking have enjoyed the same level of success. In Poland and Germany, fracking initiatives were supported by regulatory relief and tax incentives, and the public momentum of such policy support was primarily maintained by government actors’ promotion of “scientific dialogues” on fracking (Bigl, 2017; Bornemann, 2017; Lis & Stankiewicz, 2017). Most of these dialogues were sponsored by the private sector and disproportionally highlighted expert opinions favorable to the pro-fracking side. By branding such expert opinions as “objective claims,” political and business elites managed to frame fracking as crucial to securing a future energy supply, thereby closing down other viable interpretations by citizens’ voices.
Overall, the reviewed cases collectively demonstrate that fracking presents an interpretive problem interweaving economic, energy, and environmental factors at national and transnational levels. It could be viewed as an emblematic problem consisting of two central tensions: the classic tension between economic growth and environmental protection as well as the escalating tension between the urgency of post-carbon transition and the pertinacity of fossil fuel consumption (Dodge & Metze, 2017).
ADA and Discourse Coalition
Escalating political contests over fracking sheds light upon the fact that truths in public representations are somewhat relative, given their contingence on the mediation of established discursive orders. Institutions are one of the major means that reproduce and maintain such orders in the public sphere. Following Lammers (2009), the term “institutions” in this article refers to both socially constructed conventions and their host organizations, notably, governmental departments, business associations, mass media, and think tanks. Institutions and their communications during public policy deliberation have significant impacts on policy making. Lying at the intersection of discourse, ideology, and power, they guide the formation of particular forms of knowledge and impose specific rules that prescribe behavior, cognition, and communication (Fairclough & Fairclough, 2012). Fischer (2003) offers valuable insights into the differences between the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) and the discourse coalition framework (DCF), two analytical frameworks attending to stakeholders’ different roles in policy change and learning. Below, I briefly summarize the key characteristics of each framework.
Initially developed by Paul Sabatier and his colleagues (e.g., Jenkins-Smith & Sabatier, 1994; Sabatier, 1998) to offer causal explanations of policy decision making, the ACF is primarily concerned with relationships within policy sectors. In this framework, an advocacy coalition represents an alliance of political groups sharing similar interests and ideas, and actors within it include decision makers from various government levels as well as members of relevant interest groups such as lobbyists, researchers, and journalists, among others. Within a particular policy sector, debates around policy issues are argumentative interactions among different advocacy coalitions who seek to promote their respective policy belief systems by competing for dominance. Knowledge plays a key role in forming these policy belief systems. It is often difficult to change the core beliefs held by an advocacy coalition because its members tend to interpret new issues in the context of their existing knowledge. In other words, the ACF proposes that, given how policy beliefs glue an advocacy coalition together, interests alone cannot adequately account for policy change. To this end, it advances policy analysis in the direction of public debate and argumentation. The ACF prefers quantitative methods to examine policy formulation and implementation. It also emphasizes systematic data collection and analysis of the beliefs and actions of members within various advocacy coalitions, especially using survey and systematic coding of discourses during legislative sessions (Sabatier, 1998).
By comparison, Maarten Hajer (1995, 2005) presents a discursive-analytic alternative to the ACF’s neo-positivist approach to policy formation. In his view, the ACF undermines the significance of social and historical contexts in the formulation of policy beliefs. Symbolic and normative concerns within policy coalitions tend to be left unexamined as a result of “Sabatier’s desire to develop empirical hypothesis that is universally applicable to the widest range of social contexts” (Fischer, 2003, p. 101). The DCF proposed by Hajer considers argumentative interaction as a relatively independent layer of power practices. According to this constructivist approach, members of a policy coalition are held together by similar interpretations of policy issues instead of relatively clear-cut cognitive beliefs. Scholars following the DCF define such policy interpretations as “storylines” which integrate facts and normative orientations into persuasive narrative structures, which constantly influence policy debates through symbolic means (Dryzek, 2013; Metze & Dodge, 2016). The denial of climate change, for instance, is often delivered through conspiratorial stories which attack scientists, green activists, and environmental groups.
Storylines tend to be metaphorical to offer “cognitive shortcuts” for public discussions. In Hajer’s (1995, 2005) analysis of the acid rain controversy in Northern Europe during the 1980s, for instance, the term “acid rain” itself is a metaphor that connects the meteorological phenomenon of “acid precipitation” to the public’s general fear of acid corrosion. Acid precipitation affects ecosystems in complex ways, not as simply as pouring acid on trees, yet the powerful symbolic connotations of “acid rain” make it an attention-grabbing issue for policy makers and citizens. Thus, stakeholder coalitions during policy deliberation are in fact discourse coalitions. Members belonging to the same discourse coalition may not meet each other in person, but their activities collectively perpetuate and reinforce a set of storylines concerning a particular policy domain. The power of storylines lies in their ability to “offer social orientation, reassurance, or guidance,” and “what people in an environmental discourse coalition support is an interpretation of threat or crisis, not a core set of facts and values that can be teased out through content or factor analysis” (Fischer, 2003, p. 103).
The analysis of BC LNG in the following sections employs ADA—a DCF-based approach—to examine the argumentative interactions among the controversy’s major stakeholders. I focus on how they used various communication materials (e.g., press releases, research reports, blog posts, op-eds) to drive the formation of two competing discourse coalitions (i.e., pro-LNG vs. anti-LNG) and their respective storylines. The exploration of each storyline includes the novel arguments it has offered to resource-based conflicts.
Data and Method
To empirically address the research questions, I began by identifying BC LNG’s major stakeholders. After trying various methods, I decided to accomplish this step by browsing articles mentioning either “liquefied natural gas” or “LNG” in two websites: CBC News (https://www.cbc.ca/news)—the site of Canada’s public broadcaster—and BC Government News (https://news.gov.bc.ca/). The time period in focus was set between September 2011 and August 2017, which covered BC LNG’s major milestones. Table 1 provides further details of these milestones. When reading both websites, I coded specific stakeholders mentioned in their articles.
Major Developments of the BC LNG Controversy: September 2011–August 2017.
Note. BC = British Columbia; LNG = liquefied natural gas; NDP = New Democratic Party; PNW LNG = the Pacific NorthWest Liquefied Natural Gas Project.
The initial overview identified a total of 26 notable stakeholders during the BC LNG controversy. I also drew from my personal observation of the BC LNG controversy since 2016 (Chen & Gunster, 2016) to confirm these stakeholders’ active participation in LNG public debates. The BC NDP and BC Green Party were excluded from the stakeholder list since during the target time period, their voices were largely marginalized by the Liberal Party’s majority status in the provincial legislative assembly. The 26 stakeholders could be categorized as belonging to either pro- or anti-LNG coalitions according to their stances on LNG development (Table 2). It should be acknowledged that discourse coalitions tend to be fluid and context-sensitive, and there can be a shift in actors and institutions within and between storylines.
Notable Members of Pro- and Anti-LNG Coalitions.
Note. LNG = liquefied natural gas; BC = British Columbia; NGOs = non-governmental organizations.
The pro-LNG coalition is led by the BC Liberal government and its politicians. For industry stakeholders, I focus on the energy corporations behind three LNG proposals—Pacific Northwest LNG, LNG Canada, and Woodfibre LNG—because they are the most frequently discussed ones in CBC’s news coverage. These corporations’ interests are advanced by domestic and international fossil fuel advocates. Although some of these advocates come from industry associations (e.g., the BC LNG Alliance) and pro-industry policy institutes (e.g., the Fraser Institute), there are also settler and Indigenous civil groups supporting the LNG agenda.
By comparison, the anti-LNG coalition is a spontaneous formation without clearly identifiable leadership. It mainly consists of environmental organizations, progressive policy institutes, concerned citizens, some Indigenous communities, and independent media. Among them, the three most prominent members are the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), the Tyee, and the Common Sense Canadian. Independent media are treated as part of the coalition because they not only frequently published anti-LNG articles but also functioned as communication channels among LNG opponents. Moreover, unlike mainstream media, their different approach to journalistic objectivity (which emphasizes more on funding transparency than balanced reporting) allowed them to overtly advocate critiques against LNG.
Following the identification of these stakeholders, I checked their home pages to collect publicly available communication materials and understand each one’s basic standpoint on BC LNG. The analytical focus on stakeholder communications is meant to identify important sources that larger being cited by mainstream media to set up BC LNG’s news agenda. Based on initial reading of relevant CBC news stories, the manual search process aimed to identify items containing any of the following keywords: “LNG,” “natural gas,” “shale gas,” “hydraulic fracturing,” and “fracking.” A total of 4,385 items in various forms (press releases, public statements, research reports, blog posts, infographics, etc.) were collected. Considering the enormous quantity and the heterogeneous formats of these items, they were analyzed following ADA’s procedural guideline, with particular focus on recurring macro-argumentative features. Specifically, ADA integrates the notions of discourse, storyline, metaphor, and discourse coalition. Unlike conventional critical discourse analysis methods which emphasize keywords or other micro-linguistic features, the analytical focus of ADA is on uncovering macro-argumentative features across multiple texts and the ways in which these features subsequently influence the contours of discursive coalitions and their respective storylines. In the case of BC LNG, multiple stakeholders’ standpoints and arguments divided them into pro-LNG and anti-LNG coalitions. The construction of each coalition’s dominant storyline was based on a qualitative analysis of its members’ public communications.
The actual analysis takes the following steps. To begin with, I scrutinized the collected texts to identify major points of contention between LNG advocates and opponents. The interpretative nature of this step required comprehensive tracing of key ideas through multiple texts, which involved both wide and deep reading. For each stakeholder, I spent considerable time immersing myself in the details of its arguments, searching for clues to assess their tenor and nuance. Each collected item was interpreted in terms of its definition of LNG, its depiction of principal stakeholders and issues in LNG development, and proposed policy actions.
After considerable trial and error, themes began to emerge. In consultation with previous studies’ analytical frameworks (especially Bomberg, 2017; Dodge & Lee, 2017; Olive & Delshad, 2017), my examination centered around eight key discursive frames, as listed in Table 3. As mentioned in the “Introduction” section, the most distinctive feature of both storylines is the complication of the traditional “jobs versus the environment” dichotomy. Within the data, LNG proponents expended extensive efforts to brand BC LNG as a clean energy which would make unique contributions to climate change mitigation. Meanwhile, LNG opponents drew on business risk analysis to deem BC LNG an economic sham born of an extractivist state’s collusion with fossil fuel lobbyists.
List of Key Discursive Frames.
Note. LNG = liquefied natural gas; BC = British Columbia.
Following the identification of both storylines, I then assessed their strengths and weaknesses according to the criteria of plausibility, relevance, and trustworthiness (Table 4). As Bomberg (2017) points out, a compelling storyline must be backed up with plausible evidence, resonate with recipients’ daily lives, and come from trustworthy sources. The three criteria could be a storyline’s potential strength as well as vulnerability. As shown in the next section, for instance, the pro-LNG storyline was undermined not only by counterarguments but also by the gradual decline of public confidence in the scandalous BC Liberal Party.
Storyline Assessment Criteria.
Source. Adapted from Bomberg (2017) and Hajer (1995).
Findings
The Pro-LNG Storyline: Prosperity, Global Competitiveness, and Environmental Stewardship
From late 2011 to early 2012, the BC Liberal government initiated the formation of the pro-LNG coalition with a series of press releases and policy documents, which framed LNG exports to Asia as a generational opportunity to revive many rural BC communities and generate much-needed employment growth. Common among these promotional messages were references to potential investment, job growth, and tax revenues. “Over $20 billion in direct new investment, as many as 9,000 new construction jobs, about 800 long-term jobs, thousands of potential spin-off jobs, and over $1 billion a year in additional revenues to government” (BC Ministry of Energy and Mines, 2012, p. 4)—these were the excessively optimistic figures the BC Premier office quoted in February 2012 when it announced the ambitious plan to have three LNG facilities in operation by 2020. Such bold estimates encouraged citizens, especially those living near potential LNG industrial sites, to image a major transformation of their economic prospects.
Extractivist economic development was the central appeal of the government narratives for legitimizing pro-LNG policies. This appeal was deployed by defining economic struggles in rural BC as a policy problem and then LNG development as the ideal solution. Repeatedly highlighted in economically themed texts were topics such as investment, gas reserves, and personal enrichment. The mania over LNG’s economic potential continued to grow in 2013. The February throne speech, for instance, dedicated an entire section to elaborating forthcoming LNG revenues, aggressively campaigning over the projection that a “prosperity fund” supported by LNG revenues would reach a minimum of Can $100 billion over 30 years, making the province debt-free by 2028 and even eliminating the provincial sales tax (The Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, 2013). Considering the timing of this significant elevation in publicity—only 3 months before the 40th provincial election—the speech sent a clear signal to voters that Christy Clark determined to adopt LNG as a major pillar of the BC Liberal Party’s election platform.
The source of the above hyperbolic speculations, however, was rarely publicized for scrutiny. Rich Coleman, the then BC Minister of Natural Gas Development, zealously defended LNG’s economic potential in multiple interviews by claiming that the cited statistics and projects came from credible sources, including Ernst & Young and KPMG (e.g., “British Columbia’s LNG Job Claims Disputed in New Report,” 2015). Yet, a further investigation into the reports Coleman referred to (Ernst & Young, 2014; Work BC, 2014) indicates flawed assumptions underlying the proclaimed LNG prosperity. Their predictions relied mainly on government-given information as well as a highly idealized scenario in which Asian LNG prices did not fall below their 2012 average. Moreover, such reports were commissioned by the BC Liberal government after it had already declared LNG a robust job-creation sector in the BC Jobs Plan (BC Office of the Premier, 2011). Before this declaration, there was no LNG-related economic analysis in the BC Legislative Library. In other words, it is highly likely that the oft-cited economic projections were only based on internal government research. The lack of supporting evidence was a critical vulnerability of the pro-LNG storyline. Later in 2014, it was fully exposed by weak Asian LNG price, which enabled the anti-LNG coalition to make compelling counter-narratives deeming BC LNG a reckless policy move filled with economic falsehoods.
Besides the general public, foreign energy investors presented another important group of stakeholders targeted by the BC Liberal government’s coalition-building efforts. Due to the high initial costs of LNG terminals, BC Liberals strived to brand the LNG blueprint as a lucrative investment opportunity to international trade partners, especially those in Asia. Such peddling activities were exemplified by frequent trade missions led by Christy Clark or her key cabinet members. Among the 24 trade missions undertaken between 2014 and 2015, 15 of them prioritized business talks with potential LNG investors. During these trips, a slightly adjusted gold rush narrative framed BC as an ideal destination for resource-based investment. For example, after completing the May 2014 trade mission to Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, both Christy Clark and Rich Coleman bragged about BC’s “stable economy, business friendly climate, short shipping times to Asia compared to its North American competitors, and its multicultural, highly skilled workforce” and reiterated the provincial government’s willingness to “reinforce these competitive advantages to new investors and existing partners” (BC Office of the Premier, 2014, paras 4–5). Such statements are classically neoliberal in framing the government’s role as a facilitator for extractive industries (Garland & Harper, 2012).
Yet, the BC Liberal government’s sales pitches only received conditional support from industry stakeholders, who—while expressing interest in BC LNG exports to Asia—were not convinced by the optimistic predictions depicted in official narratives. Notably, with difficult market conditions since the second half of 2014 threatening the economic viability of trans-Pacific LNG trade, the BC Liberal government’s pro-LNG messages encountered an unexpected group of critics: energy analysts and economists. Take U.S. energy economist Kenneth Medlock as an example. Speaking at the Canadian Energy Research Institute’s 2015 annual natural gas conference, he suggested that “we don’t see any LNG exports from Canada until almost 2040” (cited in Johnson, 2015, para. 5), because (a) market changes made it barely profitable to ship LNG from North America to Asia, and (b) the high costs of building LNG plants from scratch put BC far behind the United States and Australia where existing LNG import facilities could be transformed for export at relatively low cost.
While activists opposing BC LNG interpreted predictions like Medlock’s as convincing evidence delegitimizing the economic ground of shale gas extraction and export (see the next section), industry stakeholders and their advocates reframed such expert opinions as leverage to pressure BC politicians. In their narratives, the successful launch of the LNG sector hinged on whether satisfactory policy incentives would be offered to offset potential business risks. This stance was clearly stated in the communications from the BC LNG Alliance, the industry association representing major energy companies behind proposed BC LNG projects. During the association’s launch event in October 2014, for instance, its founding president David Keane emphasized, The new LNG industry in British Columbia is not a foregone conclusion. [. . .] If LNG is to be viable in this province, our industry, along with each level of government, will have to make some difficult decisions in order to cross the finish line. [. . .] We need to find the right balance that enables British Columbians to get fair value for their resource, while ensuring our industry can compete in world markets over the long term. [. . .] It’s urgent we get this right as the window of opportunity to sell BC LNG into the global market is closing quickly. (“President of BC LNG Alliance Says LNG Not a Foregone Conclusion,” 2014, paras 2–6)
To justify such requests for incentives, fossil fuel boosters—notably Canadian pro-industry and right-leaning think tanks—constructed a “declining competitiveness” frame, which, by attacking regulatory barriers and compliance costs, expressed not only neoliberal deregulation (Garland & Harper, 2012) but also industry stakeholders’ intent to lead the pro-LNG coalition. The Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, in particular, stood on the media frontline and repeatedly stressed the necessity of launching the LNG sector quickly, with warnings such as “Canada’s window on LNG exports won’t remain open forever” (Green, 2014) and “the annual [LNG] export revenues lost due to [regulatory] delay would be equal to between 2% and 9.5% of British Columbia’s GDP in 2014” (Zycher & Green, 2015). Such warnings’ strategic exploitation of public anxiety vividly illustrates the orchestrated efforts by the fossil fuel industry and its advocates for further government concessions to extractivism. The image of precarious resource workers was also used to reinforce these efforts. For instance, echoing the widely publicized “Canada’s energy citizens” campaign (McCurdy, 2018), the Canadian Energy Research Institute (Simons, 2016) claimed that a prevalent anti-resource bias in BC public discourse had hurt families depending on resource jobs, and embracing the LNG opportunity was a recognition of BC’s hardworking resource workers.
Confronted by the declining competitiveness frame, the BC Liberal government was hesitant to cater to the industry’s demands at all (political) costs. Instead, its foregrounded responsible environmental stewardship and political stability when discussing BC’s key advantages in the global LNG race. Repeatedly appearing in these discussions was the claim that with hydro powering the liquefaction process, LNG produced in BC would be the “cleanest fossil fuel on earth” (BC Ministry of Energy and Mines, 2012). The emphasis on “clean LNG” elaborates a normative stance attempting to distinguish BC LNG from competitors elsewhere (Chen & Gunster, 2016). In the collected data, the BC Liberal government implemented this discursive strategy mainly via two parallel arguments. First, it downplayed environmental disturbance caused by fracking and liquefaction by defining them as manageable technical problem only requiring minor regulatory adjustments. For instance, when informing the public about fracking’s environmental impacts, the government website “LNG in BC” insists that (a) the combination of safety measures and continuous oversight during fracking will offer sufficient protection of underground aquifers, and (b) water to be used by fracking operations will use only a fraction of BC’s annual runoff (Figure 1).
Fracking infogram from the “LNG in BC” website.
More innovatively, the BC Liberal government, in resonance with industry stakeholders and fossil fuel advocates (e.g., British Petroleum, 2017; Shell, 2018), adopted the “bridge fuel” designation to shale gas and presented it as an ideal solution to climate change. Government actors responsible for environmental regulation and resource development were the primary voices delivering intertextual narratives highlighting this moral appeal. In her 2015 annual review, Mary Polak—the then BC Minister of Environment—explicitly referred LNG as BC’s unique contribution to climate change mitigation: LNG will play a significant role in the global climate solution as countries look for a cleaner, transition fuel to replace dirty fossil fuels like coal and gradually move towards 100% renewables. When nations choose LNG from British Columbia, they will do so knowing ours is produced in the most environmentally conscious way. No other LNG-producing jurisdiction on the planet meets our high standards. The export of BC LNG is truly both an economic and an environmental opportunity for the province. (BC Ministry of Environment, 2015, para. 8)
Compared with the U.S. context, the promotion of natural gas’ environmental benefits had a slightly different start in BC. Back in 2008, the province became the first jurisdiction in North America to implement a comprehensive carbon tax under Gordon Campbell—Christy Clark’s predecessor. This was undoubtedly a progressive move, but it was also based on political calculus in response to provincial voters’ general consensus on environmental values. Given this legacy, the framing of LNG as a clean energy source by the Clark cabinet was driven by both political and economic motives. Accordingly, statements like Polak’s sought to not only defend the BC Liberal Party’s environmental stewardship among voters but also alleviate the concern over regulatory costs by deeming them as necessary for building the “clean LNG” brand. To a large extent, this discursive strategy resembles established green marketing rhetoric.
Although the BC Liberal government’s balancing between extractivism and environmental stewardship had limited impacts on industry stakeholders, it was heartily embraced by many rural BC communities for whom the promise of LNG investment signified a path toward economic revival as well as a non-radical, pragmatic approach to the conflict between climate change and extractivism. Thus, many rural BC residents formed the pro-LNG coalition popular base. Their populist demands for a quick launch of LNG exports coalesced around two themes. The first drew on economic downfalls pervading rural BC to urge both provincial and federal governments to support the fossil fuel industry. The second disputed the notion that BC Indigenous communities opposed resource-based development. Instead, some of them, with the Haisla First Nation near Kitimat being the primary example, threw their support behind the extractivist narrative that a partnership with corporations in pursuing resource-driven development could lead to hope and reconciliation.
“LNG or bust”—this binary narrative was the central message underlying both themes. By employing the rhetorical strategy of polarization (Dodge & Lee, 2017), it put emphasis on resource-dependent communities’ economic desperation and political disenfranchisement. This sense of desperation was expressed by both settler and Indigenous groups—especially those in rural BC—to whom extractivism is indispensable for maintaining local employment. For instance, Karen Ogen-Toews, who led the civic group First Nations LNG Alliance, frequently appeared in opinion pieces to champion the idea of “economic reconciliation in Canada.” In her view, economic development should be prioritized to bring prosperity to Indigenous peoples. Accordingly, collaborating with the state–industry alliance to launch the LNG sector offered the best option for BC First Nations to achieve the goals of reconciliation and decolonization: There are very many views of what reconciliation means. [. . .] In fact, I think reconciliation goals such as individual and community sustainability and wellness are linked to economic development and governance. [. . .] We see several setbacks every day to lofty goals of reconciliation—but, in my opinion—the LNG Canada Final Investment Decision is a key indicator of progress on reconciliation. (Ogen-Toews, 2018, paras 1–3)
To sum up, although the pro-LNG storyline began with government propaganda celebrating BC LNG’s economic potential, falling Asian LNG prices in subsequent years triggered heated discussions on competitiveness, which led to growing division between government and industry stakeholders. The BC Liberal government responded with the “clean LNG” frame, which generated considerable grassroots support, but insufficient business interests. Thus, the dynamics within the pro-LNG coalition reveals how corporations’ pursuit of profitability could be at odds with governments’ pursuit of popular support, especially when difficult market conditions exposed the fragile economic basis of unconventional fossil fuels.
The Anti-LNG Storyline: Environmental Threat, Economic Fraud, and Political Corruption
The membership of the anti-LNG coalition is diverse, mainly consisting of progressive advocacy groups, environmental organizations, concerned citizens, and Indigenous activists. In particular, the CCPA, the Tyee, and the Common Sense Canadians have provided the digital discursive space for anti-LNG activists to communicate with each other and with the general public. To counter proponents’ framing of LNG exports as a generational opportunity, the anti-LNG coalition focused on not only LNG project’s environmental and public health threats to nearby communities but also extractivism’s negative implications for BC’s democratic governance, Indigenous sovereignty, and economic stability. Besides rejecting LNG development as the only viable path toward reviving rural communities, the opponents also offered extensive discussions on policy alternatives and their potential to take the province off the extractivist track.
As discussed in the previous section, the BC Liberal government constructed the “clean LNG” frame to distract public attention from LNG’s environmental impacts. In the anti-LNG coalition’s view, however, this frame grossly misrepresented the significant social and environmental costs associated with the production, transportation, liquefaction, and exportation of shale gas. Coalition members issued a series of warnings to the BC public, which comprised a frame addressing environmental risk and degradation. This “environmental risk” frame dominated anti-LNG messages during the BC LNG controversy’s initial stage.
An obvious starting point for exploring the “environmental risk” frame is how opponents described shale gas production. In contrast to government and industry stakeholders who adopted the technical expressions “hydraulic fracturing” or “shale extraction,” the opponents overwhelmingly labeled the production process as “fracking”—a colloquial term with harsh and destructive connotations. Initially popularized in public awareness by Gasland (Fox, 2010), the term has become associated with the horrifying “lighting water on fire” image, which speaks to fracking’s serious threat to contaminate water supplies. In the case of BC, the opponents’ deliberate choice of the term drew on widespread public distrust, which symbolically linked the province’s ambition of an LNG-exporting juggernaut to a global trend, with booming unconventional fossil fuel production threatening many communities’ public health and living environment.
Many anti-LNG campaigns took shape around one message: a nationwide ban on fracking for protecting local environment and preventing an impending planetary crisis to be brought by expanding extraction and consumption of unconventional fossil fuel. In November 2017, for instance, a consortium of 17 organizations consisting of prominent environmental and Indigenous groups (e.g., the David Suzuki Foundation, the Sierra Club of BC, and the Union of BC Indian Chiefs) demanded a full public inquiry into fracking operations. Such an inquiry, the consortium insisted, was a necessary step given “escalating water usage by fracking companies, their poor or misleading consultations with First Nations, widespread industry non-compliance with relevant provincial water laws through the construction of dozens of unlicensed dams, and record-setting induced earthquakes at BC fracking operations” (Sierra Club BC, 2017, para. 3). The broader anti-LNG storyline later incorporated this anti-fracking sentiment.
Despite being well perceived among urban BC residents, the communication of environmental threats was unable to overwhelm the “LNG or bust” mind-set pervading rural communities. Recognizing this challenge, the anti-LNG coalition went beyond the traditional “jobs versus the environment” dichotomy by attending to the economic prospect of trans-Pacific LNG trade. In particular, with post–2014 Asian LNG prices fully exposing market volatility as a major weakness of the pro-LNG storyline, the opponents made considerable efforts on challenging economic appeal. They described the reckless pursuit of LNG exports as a risky business offering little return on public investment.
Exemplifying this discursive strategy was “LNG reality check,” a policy brief series released by CCPA—one of Canada’s leading progressive think tanks. In April 2014, CCPA released the series’ first report, titled Path to Prosperity (Lee, 2014b), which took issue with the provincial government’s promise of a $100 billion Prosperity Fund arising from LNG revenues over 30 years. By digging into government statistics and estimates released by energy market analysts, the report asserted that substantial new LNG supplies coming onto world markets would enable Asian importers to press for lower prices. It also argued that implementing the LNG income tax at 7%—the necessary rate to generate the promised revenues—would be unrealistic with the growing downward pressure and the massive capital investment required to establish LNG export from scratch. Consequently, the report framed the Prosperity Fund as a proposal filled with empty promises because its primary revenue source was likely to diminish following LNG’s changing global supply-and-demand conditions: If BC received top ($16) prices and sold 82 Mt of LNG, oil and gas companies would make over $600 billion in total profits. In this best-of-all-possible-worlds scenario [. . .], BC could meet its revenue target of $100 billion over 30 years (including corporate income tax). However, global supply and demand conditions for LNG suggest a lowering of expectations about both the price BC is likely to receive in Asia and the quantities that will be exported. For low to medium production levels at a $14 price in Asia, these revenues would range from $20 to $48 billion over 30 years; at a $12 price, $12 to $29 billion over 30 years (including corporate income tax). (Lee, 2014, p. 13)
One year later, A Clear Look at BC LNG (Hughes, 2015) updated the analysis of LNG’s projected contribution to BC’s economy. At that time, as Asian LNG prices were already caught in a downward trend, the update not only reiterated the considerable economic risks associated with LNG development but also directly discredited industry-friendly think tanks’ overtly positive estimates. When challenging the Canadian Energy Research Institute’s estimates, the update’s author, David Hughes, an ex-industry expert with knowledge about energy investment, argued that the economic basis of BC LNG had already disappeared: The cost of liquefaction, transport and regasification in moving LNG to China or Japan from Canada’s west coast is estimated by the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) as U.S. $4.50 to $7.00 per million BTUs (MMBtu). [. . .] Assuming an average cost of $6.00 to move the gas and a domestic gas price of $4.00, market conditions have already eliminated the arbitrage, as landed LNG prices in Japan and Korea were estimated at $7.45 per MMBtu in June 2015 and $7.30 in China. China has also recently secured long-term gas supply commitments via pipeline from Russia, which will dampen upward movement in LNG prices there. The recent drop in oil prices may also affect the profitability of oil-linked LNG contracts, especially if it continues in the longer term. (Hughes, 2015, p. 44)
To further alter the BC public’s blind optimism about LNG development’s job-creation potential, CCPA elaborated its concern over economic uncertainties with a point-by-point rebuttal of relevant official claims (Lee, 2015b). It pointed out that Grant Thornton, the consultancy commissioned to develop employment estimates, made its analysis based on information provided by the BC Liberal government. Accordingly, “there was no practical reason for Grant Thornton to be hired to use the government’s own numbers and model apart from providing the appearance of independent justification for an absurdly large jobs number” (Lee, 2015b, p. 4). Research into the “100,000 jobs” number found that almost every step in Grant Thornton’s estimation process was overly optimistic. By comparison, CCPA’s independent calculation indicated that even if BC were able to achieve a modest beginning of LNG export, its actual job-creation capacity would be limited to “only 2,000 to 3,000 construction jobs per plant over three years and 200 to 300 permanent workers once operational” (Lee, 2015b, p. 1). Furthermore, some of these jobs could be taken by “fly-in, fly-out” workers instead of local ones.
The strategic engagement with mainstream economic analyses by the anti-LNG coalition demonstrates a unique approach to altering public perceptions of resource development. Not only did the discussions of BC LNG’s dubious business model shake the economic foundation of pro-LNG narratives, but they also enabled opponents to confront the BC Liberal Party’s political motives and assert that its extractivist policies betray the public interest. In his summary of the “LNG Reality Check” series’ major findings, Marc Lee, CCPA’s Senior Economist, warned the BC public that there was “a pattern of misinformation about LNG—coming primarily from the BC Liberal government, which should be looking out for the public interest instead of blindly championing the industry” (Lee, 2015a, para. 1).
The framing of BC LNG as an “economic fraud” thus illuminates the importance of engaging with economic issues when challenging extractivism. The anti-LNG coalition did not stop here. It intended to determine why, if the LNG sector’s economic basis was so fragile, the BC Liberal Party would push it so hard. Focusing on this perspective, coalition members scrutinized industry lobbying behind pro-LNG policies, which resulted in critical discussions on LNG development’s threats to democratic governance and Indigenous sovereignty. Specifically, such discussions took shape around the idea that, in pursuit of the LNG dream, the BC Liberal government has acted as an “extractivist state” conspiring with industry elites. The anti-LNG coalition’s adoption of the extractivist state notion put emphasis on the integration of carbon capitalism and state-sponsored extractivism in resource-based economies like Canada. Inspired by its neighbor petro-state Alberta, the BC Liberal government, by various policy means, paved the way for LNG development by neglecting and even attacking local communities’ legitimate concerns. Yet, unlike Alberta where the bitumen sector has already been an economic pillar for decades, the BC LNG agenda was only backed by economic prospects, which were vulnerable to charges concerning transparency and democratic policy making.
Within the collected data, critiques on state-sponsored extractivism tended to be invoked by issues such as tax subsidies and unregulated lobbying activities. To attract foreign LNG investment, the BC Liberal government offered a series of tax incentives, especially reduced LNG tax and electricity rates. By questioning the rationales of such incentives, the anti-LNG coalition shed light on the contradiction between the potential prosperity proclaimed by the pro-LNG coalition and the actual benefits LNG projects could deliver. For example, when Woodfibre LNG received its final investment approval in late 2016, Andrew Nikiforuk—the Tyee’s environmental columnist—harshly criticized the generous “discounts” offered to the project: To save face on her outrageous LNG promises, Clark has now offered some significant giveaways to Tanoto [Woodfibre’s developer] that every British Columbian will pay for. [. . .] The government has halved the LNG tax rate to 3.5 per cent—among the lowest in the world and locked it in for 25 years. It granted Woodfibre and other LNG projects an 18-month holiday on carbon taxes. [. . .] It lowered natural gas royalties to next to nothing and offers the industry nearly $200 million in drilling credits every year. And there will be no sales tax on methane purchases. In addition, the province encouraged Woodfibre on Oct. 25 to pitch the District of Squamish a reduced property tax rate of $2 million instead of the normal mill rate of $8 million to $10 million. (Nikiforuk, 2015, paras 13–20)
After listing these worrisome numbers, Nikiforuk (2015) continued with a rebuttal of LNG boosters’ justification of such generosity, pointing out that due to global market changes, government concessions were likely to protect only the interest of private capital: British Columbia’s LNG advocates may argue that it took such incentives to jumpstart an industry that will produce revenue for the province and jobs for citizens. But with so few jobs (just 100 permanent jobs for the Woodfibre plant) and no guarantee of revenue given all the subsidies, and a global LNG glut, the BC Liberal government has ignored the marketplace and embraced a Soviet model of LNG development. In this special Clark model, taxpayers pay for everything: from the water given to shale gas frackers for free to the electricity provided to energy-gobbling terminals. (paras 21–23)
The above critique by Nikiforuk framed LNG as a fraud born out of a state–industry alliance’s pursuit of extractivist growth. To strengthen this argument, the anti-LNG coalition also pointed to the scope of LNG-related subsidies. As outlined in Kniewasser (2017), the tax reduction package offered to the LNG sector was comprehensive and substantial, ranging from carbon tax exemptions to a 25-year fixed royalty regime. The tax measures supporting BC LNG had political and economic consequences. Politically, these measures suggested BC Liberal Party’s bad decision making and their betrayal of the public will to establish a truly green economy. Economically, they resulted in using scarce public dollars to lessen the incentive to reduce carbon pollution.
By disclosing the intimate relationship between government and industry stakeholders and how it led to unfair policy leanings, the anti-LNG coalition successfully transformed the LNG controversy into a political conflict in which the state–industry alliance infringed on local communities’ interests. From the perspective of coalition building, such politicization expands the scope of stakeholders that can be brought into the anti-LNG coalition on the basis of democratic integrity. To complement the discussions on bad governance, the anti-LNG coalition further addressed how activists, through various forms of public resistance, challenged many LNG proposals’ review processes. Notably, the persistence of First Nations and their settler allies in saying no to elite outsiders proved to be another powerful framing device.
Over the past decade, the issue of Indigenous sovereignty has been articulated quite strongly in Canadian energy infrastructure controversies. In BC, for instance, the recently ended political conflict over the Northern Gateway Pipeline project presents a noteworthy case in which opponents engaged in extensive discussions on why the project ought to be canceled, given its lack of Indigenous support (Gunster & Neubauer, 2019). This strategic focus effectively re-articulated the project and its approval process as a continuation of settler colonialism against affected Indigenous communities, and mounting public pressure led to the project’s eventual cancelation in November 2016. As the heated debates around Northern Gateway developed in parallel with the provincial government’s aggressive push for LNG development, many LNG opponents adopted identical discursive tactics to advance the idea that LNG projects should proceed under affected Indigenous communities’ own terms.
The anti-LNG coalition’s elaboration of Indigenous resistance centered around the concept of social license which refers to the resource sector’s continuous efforts to build stronger relationships with communities affected by specific projects (Gunster & Neubauer, 2019; Murphy-Gregory, 2018; Syn, 2014). Although this concept tends to be criticized because it often legitimizes extractivism in practice, several recent studies have highlighted its radical potential. According to Syn (2014), the metaphor of a license which could be withdrawn any time could empower marginalized communities whose rights have been consistently neglected or violated by governments and businesses. The inherent vagueness of what should be included in public conversations on social license further expands discursive space for environmental activism to contest corporate activities (Murphy-Gregory, 2018).
In the case of BC LNG, despite the existence of Indigenous advocates for “economic reconciliation,” the majority of BC First Nations declined to participate in the LNG agenda. The most remarkable case showing such resistance occurred in May 2015, when the Lax Kw’alaams First Nation near Prince Rupert unanimously declined to give consent in exchange for more than $1 billion promised economic benefits from Petronas, the primary investor in the PNW LNG proposal (Jang, 2015). To the surprise of the pro-LNG coalition, the decisive factor leading to such a decision was the project’s impact on the juvenile wild salmon habitat in the Skeena River’s Flora Bank, located close to the proposed LNG site on Lelu Island. The economic benefits of salmon fishing are incomparable to the incoming Petronas investment, yet many Lax Kw’alaams members were furious about the exclusion of salmon’s cultural significance in the project’s impact assessment process. Reflecting upon the community’s voting process, the Tyee’s reporter Ian Gill (2015) argued that the Lax Kw’alaams members’ determination had far-reaching implications for Crown-Indigenous relations in Canada: It clearly confounds companies that they can’t just buy a social license in the same way they can get a business license or an export license, but that won’t stop them from trying. And, as we are witnessing with the Site C dam development, eventually the government will just invoke what it considers to be the superior interests of the Crown over the constitutionally enshrined and court-confirmed rights of Canada’s First Nations. [. . .] But the stern resolve of the people of Lax Kw’alaams is of a piece with their ancient history, and in standing up for their rights, they are making modern history too. There’s more than a glimmer of justice in that. (paras 26–27)
Discourses like the above quote enabled the anti-LNG coalition to articulate the LNG agenda as a continuation of settler colonialism. Accordingly, the protection of Indigenous lands and waters strengthened the political legitimacy of the anti-LNG movement. Overall, although the anti-LNG storyline started as conventional environmental arguments against fracking, it gradually adapted to BC’s economic and political contexts in subsequent years, which resulted in a radical counter-discourse exposing the hypocrisy of extractivism and industry–state co-optation.
Discussion and Conclusion
This article has identified two competing storylines found in LNG stakeholders’ communication materials. At one extreme, proponents deliver an optimistic message that expanding shale gas extraction and launching LNG exports to Asia will bring substantial economic benefits to BC and help to reduce global GHG emissions. At the other end, opponents warn against the LNG sector’s fragile economic basis and the devastating social and environmental impacts it would bring to both coastal and interior communities. Both storylines are diverse and complex, consisting of intertwined economic, political, environmental, and moral claims. By examining macro-argumentative patterns across multiple public texts, the analysis has revealed deeper meanings and debates surrounding BC LNG. In particular, the findings illustrate how the discursive boundary set by the traditional “jobs versus the environment” dichotomy has become blurred in the BC context, primarily due to two trends: (a) the pro-LNG coalition’s framing of shale gas a clean and morally acceptable fossil fuel by linking it to BC’s strong environmental stewardship, and (b) the anti-LNG coalition’s disclosure of trans-Pacific LNG trade’s economic absurdity by interpreting data from the fossil fuel industry’s own market analyses. Below, this article concludes with three broad claims concerning the role of communication in political contests over unconventional fossil fuels in resource-dependent economies like Canada.
First, the diversified discursive frames embedded in the pro-LNG storyline point to the growing sophistication and intertextuality of extractivist rhetoric, through which fossil fuel advocates coordinate symbolic resources to advocate particular economic and industrial practices. In the current case, the pervasive branding of shale gas as a bridge fuel builds on long-standing efforts by a variety of stakeholders, whose promotional strategies acquire much of their rhetorical force, ironically, from environmental rhetoric. The branding of shale gas as a bridge fuel hinges upon its contrast to the pervasive public perception of dirty coal and oil. Considering the negative social and environmental impacts of fracking (especially methane leakage), the clean energy label applied to LNG is especially problematic and misleading. More importantly, the higher production cost of shale gas than conventional natural gas means that it is difficult for trans-Pacific LNG trade survive without various government subsidies.
Second, the presence of economic critiques is truly unique and interesting, which points to the potential of employing mainstream economic wisdom to resist the expansion of unconventional fossil fuel. Discussions on fossil fuel lock-in and economic uncertainty were initially peripheral but later gained prominence when market volatility fully exposed the pro-LNG coalition’s internal division over taxation as well as extractivism’s inability to bring marginal communities (especially First Nations) out of boom-and-bust cycles. In light of the frequent intertextual references to the economic perspective in anti-LNG messages, questions surrounding BC LNG’s economic viability played a significant part in the anti-LNG campaign, and their credibility among ordinary citizens—even those from resource-dependent communities—was arguably better than anti-fracking messages.
Third, it is inspiring to note that opposition to LNG also evolved into broader discussions on democratic governance and social license, which highlighted a lack of transparency, accountability, and citizen input. Such discussions have attended to policy making surrounding LNG’s regulation and development. This process of politicization indicates that extreme carbon has become “an object of democratic debate between conflicting yet legitimate political projects, between conflicting, yet legitimate, social actors, or more specifically, politico-ideological conflict between alternative futures” (Pepermans & Maeseele, 2016, p. 224). With the BC Liberal government withdrawing from the environmental sphere and embracing shale gas extraction and export, LNG opponents were forced to draw on regional popular support to accuse the pro-LNG coalition of industry–state co-optation. The discussions of democratic governance and social license improved the trustworthiness and relevance of the anti-LNG coalition among the general public because the idea of local communities threatened by the intrusive actions of government and industry elites tended to fall on receptive ears usually distant from civil disobedience.
In conclusion, what does this research imply about the future of Canadian energy politics? As time of writing, the BC LNG controversy is still ongoing, and struggles for discursive dominance can change over time due to power dynamics between the two contending coalitions. But the trajectory mapped in the above analysis points to an emerging bloc of “progressive extractivism” (Pineault, 2018) built upon Canada’s historical and present hinterland status in global capitalism. The complex consists of not only the transnational extractive capital (e.g., energy conglomerates) but also a larger domestic coalition led by centrist/center-left politicians, fossil fuel advocates, and business elites. Resource-dependent workers and their communities form the coalition’s popular base. This means emphasizing environmental risks alone is unlikely to gain prominence in public opinion, and thus, environmentalists need to build a broader coalition with other progressive forces, especially Indigenous activists to whom protecting mother nature is inherent in the struggle for decolonization.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
