BC’s PRGT pipeline was approved. What’s next? (w/ Kai Nagata)

With the approval of the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipeline and the passing of Bills 14 and 15 in B.C., Emiko Newman spoke with Kai Nagata, the northern pipeline campaigner at Dogwood, about the powerful interests behind these decisions and the resistance that has risen up in response.

This episode was recorded on June 17 and was published on June 25.

Credits: Produced by Emiko Newman and Doug Hamilton-Evans. Hosted by Emiko Newman. Featuring Kai Nagata. Music by Anjali Appadurai. Audio editing by Blue Light Studios. Artwork by Geoff Smith.

Articles/podcasts mentioned in this episode:

- Dogwood - Building grassroots power since 1999

- U.S. military contractor preps B.C. pipeline build – Kai Nagata (Dogwood), June 19, 2025

- Bill 15: A blank cheque for unchecked power - Ashley Zarbatany (Dogwood), May 22, 2025

- BC Climate Emergency Campaign (get involved!)

Transcript

Emiko Newman (00:02)
Hello and welcome back to Break In Case of Emergency, a podcast about mobilizing Canada for the climate crisis with audacious solutions rooted in justice and workers' rights. My name is Emiko Newman. I am the coordinator of the BC Climate Emergency Campaign and I will be your host for today. There has been a lot going on politically in BC over the last few weeks. We saw the passing of Bill 14 and Bill 15, quickly followed by a pipeline approval, all of which have serious consequences for Indigenous rights and the climate, not to mention the economy and even our health. And so we wanted to have a conversation to really break down what all of this means, because we're not really seeing much in mainstream media about any of this. And at the same time, there's also just a lot going on in the world right now.

So it's understandable if folks are not completely up to date with BC politics. Hopefully after listening to this episode, you'll feel more informed and ready to make connections as well to similar federal and provincial bills that we're seeing getting passed elsewhere. And we plan to dig into some of that in a future podcast. So do stay tuned.

In the meantime, I'm super happy to be joined by Kai Nagata, who is the Communications Director at Dogwood BC, and he will be walking us through this recent pipeline approval, as well as what Bills 14 and 15 are all about. So Kai, you live literally within walking distance of the proposed route of the Prince Rupert gas transmission pipeline. Let's start there. Can you give us some background on this pipeline and talk about the recent approval?

Kai Nagata (01:54)
Sure. OK, so the Prince Rupert gas transmission pipeline actually doesn't go to Prince Rupert. This was proposed more than 10 years ago by a different company, PC Energy. And you might know them from the Keystone XL fight and the Coastal GasLink fight. And basically, after 10 years, the company hadn't made any progress on the pipeline. And they didn't have the money to build it. And they realized that it was going to be a regulatory nightmare, trying to get their thing proved. And so they sold it. They sold it last year to a consortium made up of the Nisg̱a'a Nation in BC and Western LNG, which is a mysterious shell company from Houston, Texas, that turns out is backed entirely by Wall Street private equity money. And so this new ownership group took over and right at the end of last year,

They hired some contractors to do two months of extremely rushed work in order to secure this loophole in BC called a substantial start. And basically, if you can convince some bureaucrats in the environment ministry that you're really serious about building this project, then they will make your certificate valid forever. And that's what they did a couple of weeks ago here in BC. So essentially what it means is that the pipeline that had no business case that was proposed 10 years ago under very different market conditions and which did not advance for a decade ⁓ has now been given a green light to proceed despite the fact that a bunch of really important laws have changed in BC in the meantime. And one of those is our environmental assessment law. One of them is the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act in BC, which integrates the United Nations Declaration into this law.

And so we're left with a project that is out of date, that should have expired last fall, and which is now being fast-tracked by the BC government. ⁓ And all of this is being done with money from some of the biggest donors behind Donald Trump, who are really driving his drill baby drill agenda in the States and around the world. And it's quite shocking ⁓ for British Columbians to hear our leaders say, Yeah, Trump is bad. We got to stand up to Trump, up. And then at the same time, to fast track a pipeline that would profit the very people that are funding his political movement in the US. So that's what we're facing here in British Columbia. And of course, there's lots of, lots of reasons to, oppose this massive build out of fracked gas infrastructure. But really the headline, I think for people across Canada is that this is a mega owned pipeline that would benefit American billionaires who our leaders claim to be fighting against.

Emiko Newman (04:55)
Yeah, thanks for that background, Kai. And when you lay it out like that so clearly, it feels so obvious that this is not a project that should be going through, that should not have received the green light. And I know that there was so much opposition. There has been opposition to this project for months, if not years. And so can you talk a little bit about what some of that opposition has looked like, particularly from the local Indigenous nations?

Kai Nagata (05:24)
Right. So I think we have to start in Nisg̱a'a territory because this is being done in the name of Nisg̱a'a people and it's being branded as this exercise in economic reconciliation. This is an opportunity for Indigenous people to own a pipeline. And so the Nisg̱a'a government is very excited about moving the PRGT pipeline forward. But Nisg̱a'a people are asking what deal their government has signed with these American companies and they're not getting any response. There's no transparency. There's ⁓ a veil of secrecy wrapped around the deal that the Nisg̱a'a treaty government has signed with Western LNG, this company from Texas. And so people in the Nisg̱a'a villages are asking, is this really a good deal? What are we on the hook for? What collateral are we putting forward and what risks and liabilities are the Nisg̱a'a people assuming if this project does not ⁓ work out the way that its proponents are hoping it will. And again, a big pipeline company, TC Energy, which successfully built the coastal gasoline pipeline with the help of the militarized RCMP squads in BC, they didn't want to touch this thing. They dumped it. And so ⁓ there's a real information gap. And Nisg̱a'a folks are asking for the contract so that they can understand what it is that they're signing up for. ⁓ When you go outside of Nisga territory, it's just important, I think, to have a little bit of context on the treaty process in BC. So the BC government sees the Nisga treaty government as a key ally because they signed a treaty in 2000. So it was the first modern treaty signed in BC. And essentially, terminates Aboriginal rights. It terminates Aboriginal title over the land.

And that gives certainty for investors in return for funding through the federal and provincial governments. so the Nisg̱a'a lands, the Nisg̱a'a territory that's claimed by the treaty government extends into other people's territories on all sides. And it's caused a lot of bitterness and ⁓ a lot of ⁓ conflict over the years with neighboring nations because the treaty was negotiated unilaterally and it didn't involve all the other Tsimshian and Gitxsan groups on either side. And so that's really where you see the biggest opposition to both this pipeline and the gas terminal that it would feed. And so you're seeing hereditary chiefs on Tsimshian territory, on Gitanyow territory, and on Gitxsan territory saying, hold on a minute: We never agreed to this pipeline deal with these Americans and one nation can't make decisions about all the other nations territory along 750 kilometers of this pipeline route, plus the tanker terminal, plus the tanker route. And so the BC government is really strategically using one treaty nation and sort of using them as a shield to say, this is an Indigenous owned project.

This is good for First Nations. This is about economic reconciliation while ignoring and in fact, actively working against the governance and the land claims of nations on either side of Nishikata territory. So that's a little bit of context. I think a lot of people are shy to criticize the PRT pipeline because it does have on paper 50 % ownership from the Nisg̱a'a Nation. But one thing that's very clear that I think we need to get out of the way is that the gas terminal has no Indigenous ownership at all. The gas terminal wouldn't even be built in Canada. And so from a worker perspective, the idea of offshoring thousands of construction jobs, in this case to shipyards in Korea, to build a floating gas terminal in order for American billionaires to sell BC gas overseas, and again, fund their authoritarian political movement. This is a terrible deal for Canadian workers. It's a terrible deal for all the nations along the room, other than ⁓ the pipeline owners. And this is a terrible deal for people in BC who will be subsidizing this project to the tune of billions of dollars again, so that mega billionaires can profit off of BC's resources. you know, across the province, we're seeing a lot of ⁓ disbelief and growing anger that our government would try to use the current moment and the disruption of Donald Trump to fast track a project that benefits his authoritarian political movement and his biggest donors.

Emiko Newman (10:34)
And Kai, what happens if PRGT does end up being a stranded asset? Let's say ⁓ things move ahead and then eventually grind to a halt and the pipeline doesn't end up being built or it's half built and then fails. How will the Nisg̱a'a Nation be impacted by that? What are they going to be left bearing the brunt of?

Kai Nagata (11:01)
Well, we don't know the details of the deal. And so we don't know ⁓ essentially what collateral the Nisg̱a'a Treaty government has put forward. But we do know that their financial position is extremely shaky. And ⁓ all of the investment money, the hundreds of millions of dollars so far that have been poured into Western LNG, their partner company, all of that has come from Wall Street.

And so ⁓ we don't know the structure of the payouts, but we do know that from similar projects around the world, that ⁓ the lawyers and the consultants who arrange these big financing deals, they get paid out first when the bank loans come through. And the people who ⁓ have played this game for a long time, and this is all companies that got rich on the Gulf Coast during the last big LNG boom in the United States, companies like Apollo Global Management, Bechtel is the construction contractor. They have a playbook and they structure these deals so that the risk of course is minimal for the people who walk in with the most capital. And so, for nation that doesn't have a very strong position, that is borrowing money in order to attain a stake in a project, yeah, there's big risks and when you talk about the prospect of stranded assets, that's very real. When we look at global LNG markets right now, these Wall Street companies are really trying to manufacture demand. And that carries some big risks because if their strategy doesn't work out, ⁓ we see a market that is about to be oversupplied, ⁓ where prices could be far too low for ⁓ projects in Western Canada to make a profit.

And then you have a situation where the salmon streams have all been trenched across. The lava beds have been blasted and dug up. ⁓ You know, the land has been ripped up and maybe the pipeline has been laid. But if the economics of the project don't work out, then yeah, it's likely local people who will bear both the environmental and social costs and potentially the financial liabilities for decades to come. So that's a major concern. And that's why, again, Nisg̱a'a citizens are asking their government to publish the deal that they've all signed ⁓ as a nation so that people can understand the risks. that so far has been a brick wall. the media in BC, unfortunately, have not displayed a lot of curiosity about actually digging into this deal and instead are happy to ⁓ just quote the premier when he says, you know, this is great thing for reconciliation and for investment in jobs in BC. And those claims just don't stand up to scrutiny.

Emiko Newman (14:08)
Yeah. And let's talk about LNG as well, because we haven't really gotten into that yet. But this is a natural gas pipeline that would be transporting ⁓ LNG ⁓ across seas. And when it comes to LNG, we have to talk about the climate impacts of that, the economic impacts of that, the impacts to Indigenous rights. ⁓ Can you?

I know we might even have a future episode dedicated specifically to LNG. It's a huge topic and we can talk about that for hours. But ⁓ can you just give our listeners kind of a brief rundown around why is LNG so harmful? Why is it so risky to ⁓ be trying to further LNG infrastructure right now?

Kai Nagata (15:03)
Right. So we're talking about methane gas and specifically ⁓ gas that is extracted through a process called fracking. The reason why this is significant is because before the US rolled out fracking technology at scale, ⁓ other countries were pulling ahead in the global fossil fuel game. And when these American companies figured out horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, they unlocked energy reserves on the North American continent that eclipsed all of the other ⁓ countries in the world. so very quickly, the United States became the biggest producer of natural gas or fracked methane gas and the biggest exporter in the world once the federal government lifted export restrictions. So in the last 10 years, the energy picture worldwide has really shifted ⁓ to the advantage of the United States and these Wall Street companies that are bankrolling the gas expansion. And so the problem with rapidly extracting a whole bunch of new, ⁓ very energy dense, very powerful fossil fuel is that the market hasn't caught up yet. And when you have too much supply and not enough demand, you lose money. The drill rigs stop. And so what they're trying to do, I mentioned this earlier, is manufacture new demand for gas. And they're trying to do that in two ways. So plan A is LNG. And that means exporting gas on boats to developing countries around the world. Not that these countries are asking for more gas, but the US sees an opportunity to fight the rollout of renewable energy by using gas for electricity. And so they're trying to create a situation where all of these countries would have to buy their fuel from these US companies in order to run their power stations so that people can keep the lights on and study and go to work and build factories and all the pieces of economic development that rely on electricity. Of course, they have another option, which is to just generate electricity in their own country from the sun and the wind, from geothermal or tidal. And the US does not want to see that happen because these oligarchs want to control the fuel supply. so LNG is a way of forcing countries to buy fuel from the United States. And they're doing that by threatening them with crippling tariffs. And when you look at the countries that are really on the target list for, for growing these LNG markets, these are countries that were all, ⁓ you know, threatened by Donald Trump on his big liberation day tariff announcement. And the quickest way to eliminate a trade deficit with the United States is to buy boatloads of American fuel. And so that's really the strategy here. And at the same time, have banks and ⁓ countries that are allied to the United States and rely on them for military protection that are really pushing the infrastructure and the loans required to build out new gas burning ⁓ electrical power stations across all of these ⁓ developing countries around the Pacific. So that's plan A is it's extremely dark. And, you know, make no mistake, this is about suppressing and delaying the rollout of renewable energy. Plan B, if that doesn't work out, because despite their power and wealth, these US companies don't control global markets completely. Plan B is to build out a whole bunch of gas powered data centers on North American soil and use that same gas ⁓ to power this huge build out of essentially AI and ⁓ military tools based on ⁓ these gas powered supercomputers. And so you're seeing massive build out along pipeline routes across the United States ⁓ where, yeah, we are expected to massively increase the supply of gas powered electricity in order to power this sort of data center revolution. And so you really have to understand those two things as linked, plan A and plan B, LNG and gas power data centers. And that is the opportunity that these Wall Street money managers are extremely excited about. So the last thing I'll say is that none of this anymore is being driven by oil companies. Like 10 years ago, we were dealing with Shell and Petronas and Enbridge and these companies that are sort of established players in fossil fuel game. Now we're dealing with these Wall Street private equity firms who are invested in all sorts of different sectors of the economy, but they see a real opportunity ⁓ to make a ton of money off of the price gap basically between gas in North America and in other markets where they continue to try to create new demand or reduce new demand around the world. And so really this is a Wall Street bubble. and the sooner it pops the better.

Emiko Newman (20:28)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, the game has really shifted a lot, hasn't it? The entire landscape has changed so much in the past. Go ahead, Kai. Yeah.

Kai Nagata (20:39)
I'm sorry, you wanted to talk about climate and I didn't even mention the climate impacts, right?

Emiko Newman (20:45)
As I said, there's so much to say.

Kai Nagata (20:48)
Well, the reality is that there are geopolitical factors now that are driving this ⁓ strategy by the United States. And that's why it's not just ⁓ American companies. You see the government getting involved and you see alignment with the State Department and with the White House. But let's not forget, we're talking about methane, which is the most potent ⁓ greenhouse gas that's commonly used in industry. And when it's released, it has very intense warming effects over the short term. And so when you are fracking for gas, transporting it through pipelines, compressing it, putting it on boats, sailing across the ocean, and then regasifying it and piping it to customers in other countries, methane leaks all the way along through that process. And that's really what makes these projects so dangerous from a climate perspective is those invisible leaks of unburned methane all the way along the supply chain. And what researchers specifically at Cornell have found is that the longer that supply chain, the longer the distance you have to transport methane, the more of it leaks and the more its climate benefits are erased and reversed. so basically if you're shipping gas from North America to Asia, the climate impact is as bad or worse than just burning coal in these power stations. And so we're creating this whole new infrastructure ⁓ in order to rack and burn a fossil fuel that is even worse for the climate than the coal that these companies plan to displace. So that's the big line that we're fed with with LNG is that this is going to save the planet and in fact the opposite.

Emiko Newman (22:40)
Yeah, it's absolutely ridiculous that that is the line being parroted by all of these companies, politicians. we need Canadian LNG so that we can be displacing the coal from all these other countries, China and India. When you look at the facts, like what you just shared, Kai, that's a complete and utter joke. It's a lie. I want to just bring us back. We're going to move on ⁓ shortly, but finally, just around this substantial start designation.

Basically what happened is that the PRGT ⁓ construction company pushed around some shovels of dirt ⁓ and then the environmental assessment office said, yep, that looks substantial to us, so here's your approval. But does that mean that this is a done deal? Are we gonna be seeing construction start imminently? ⁓ What do you think?

Kai Nagata (23:37)
Not at all. ⁓ This was a strategy in order to gain the regulatory system in BC. ⁓ But there's a lot of ways that this project can still be stopped. So yes, you mentioned the substantial start and really the minimal and symbolic amount of construction work that the contractors carried out. I want to mention that the company that has been selected to build this pipeline is Bechtel. And Bechtel is a globe-spanning US military contractor, perhaps best known for profiteering off the war in Iraq and privatizing people's water in Bolivia. I mean, they work on all kinds of projects, including nuclear power stations and roads and tunnels and bridges, civic works all over the United States and around the world, but they are closely tied to the US State Department and the US government. And I think it's significant that it's Bechtel that has been chosen to try to build this pipeline across unceded Indigenous lands in British Columbia. So you have American military contractors with American security firms backed up by the BCRCMP that are planning to try to push through ⁓ Gitanyow and Gitxsan territory specifically, where local house groups and clans have denied consent. And so last year, while the contractors were ⁓ clearing a symbolic amount of land and putting up a temporary work camp, you had a blockade from getting out hereditary chiefs ⁓ along the Cranberry River in Northern BC, where they stopped project-related traffic from crossing their territory to the work sites for two straight months.

Emiko Newman (25:32)
I want us to get into Bill 14 and Bill 15. So a few weeks ago, shortly before the PRGT decision, there was a lot of kerfuffle that we are hearing around Bill 14, which is the Renewable Energy Projects Act, or the Streamlined Permitting Act, and Bill 15, the Infrastructure Projects Act. So quite similar sorts of bills.

Both of them faced significant backlash and opposition, in particular Bill 15, and yet they both got rammed through the legislature in record time. So, Kai, can you tell us what are these bills supposedly going to do and why was there so much opposition to them?

Kai Nagata (26:18)
Right. So just like other fast track bills that we're seeing across the country, these are being pitched as a way to kickstart the Canadian economy in response to the uncertainty created by Trump. And that's really the rationale, whether it's in Ontario with Bill 5, federally with Bill C5, or in BC with Bill 15. And so, you know when you look at the title of these bills, they all sound great. It's like the Patriotic Maple Syrup Act for more jobs and prosperity. Nobody's going to say no to that. But when you dig into the details, you realize that the people who are pushing for these bills and the people who benefit are the same corporate overlords who have been trying to enact this agenda now for years. And these bills really help to accelerate projects that were proposed long before Trump came to power and long before the current trade war. So in BC, Bill 14 is ostensibly about renewable energy and trying to speed up the build out of renewables, which is something that we support on paper. But what they're including in renewable energy infrastructure are large publicly funded transmission lines in order to electrify oil and gas operations. And so what the BC government has done is something no other jurisdiction in the world has attempted, which is to use renewable energy to liquefy gas ⁓ in order to essentially greenwash it, even though it doesn't make any difference to the emissions overall. And I can explain that in a second. And so when we hear renewable energy in BC, ⁓ we have lots of nostalgic ⁓ warm and fuzzy associations with BC Hydro and these big nation building projects from the 50s and 60s, obviously which had devastating impacts on fisheries and Indigenous lands. But there's a real attempt to tap into the sort of smug moral superiority that comes with renewable energy and say, we're saving the world. ⁓ The reality is that the major impetus for Bill is a new transmission line that would connect to the very controversial site C Dam to LNG terminals in the Northwest in order to essentially subsidize gas exports on the backs of hydro rate payers and taxpayers in BC. So that's Bill 14. Bill 15 is very explicitly the overriding Indigenous rights to build foreign-owned megaprojects built. And the only groups that supported this ⁓ were the mining lobby and the proponents behind Ksi Lisims LNG and the PRGT pipeline. And the reason they supported these bills is very simple. They see this as a way to essentially use provincial law to override existing ⁓ duties of consultation and to try to create sort of a political bulldozer to push aside any opposition from people who might say, well, hang on a minute. ⁓ What about actually reviewing this project under modern environmental laws?

And we're getting rid of all of that ⁓ using the Trump moment as an excuse. So in that sense, Bill 15 is very similar to what Doug Ford just did in Ontario with Bill 5. There's slightly different vocabulary. Doug Ford's talking about creating special economic zones. The BC government is talking about creating priority projects that are in the interests of British Columbia. But all of this is about creating a ⁓ state of exception, permanent emergency mindset around building new, in many cases, foreign-owned private projects. And in BC, we saw the ministers try to use schools and hospitals as the excuse for why they needed to rapidly pass this bill. And there's just no justification for that. There's no reason that you need a new law in order to build public projects that are in the public interest, really this is about, again, like trying to a state of emergency so that opponents will get out of the way. And First Nations of BC saw right through it. And so we had huge opposition from Indigenous groups across the province who saw this rightly as an attack on their rights under these extraordinary conditions where, you know, we're all worried about the economic uncertainty created by Trump and the trade war and now the real wars that are breaking out around the world. And that's not an excuse to ⁓ try to override the sovereignty of Indigenous nations or try to do an end run around the courts and around the constitution to fast track these projects like the PRGT pipeline. you know, the government, think tried to ⁓ slip this one past people, ⁓ they saw right through it. And so when opposition ramped up, the BC government just used ⁓ procedural tricks in the legislature to shut down debate and ran this through. And eventually they had to use the Speaker of the House, which is supposed to be a nonpartisan position, to break the tie and enforce both Bill 14 and Bill 15 through, just because ⁓ their majority in BC is so...slim, they only have a one feet majority. So they had to really pull out all the stops to get this through. But they did it. of course, the corporate proponents behind these big open pit gold mines and gas pipelines are very happy about that.

Emiko Newman (32:17)
So Kai, one other thing that I want to just raise is that it's not written anywhere in these bills that LNG is not going to be fast-tracked. Right? Basically, Premier Eby said, trust me, trust me, we're not going to be fast-tracking LNG. But it's not put into the legislation. So why are we supposed to just trust his empty promises?

Well, Kai, we're going to leave it there for today. I want to thank you so much for being our wonderful special guest and for bringing this, the joyous sounds of the baby ravens in the background. ⁓ We are going to have another episode very soon where we get into what's happening in Ontario. We have Bill 5 that just got pushed through. We didn't even get to talk about Bill C5, which is something that's being pushed through federally right now.

And obviously there are so many connections that we can be making between all of that and also tying that to PRGT and Bill 14 and Bill 15 in BC. So we'll have another episode coming out very soon when we get into all of that. Thank you, Kai, for joining us. To our listeners, thank you for listening. As always, we would love for you to share this episode with a friend.

like the episode, like the podcast, subscribe, rate, review, all of those things. And also check out Dogwood BC. They are a fantastic advocacy organization who are just doing incredible work on the ground in communities. Check them out on social media, check out their website, follow their work and campaigns. And we will see you all next time. Thank you, Kai. Bye. ⁓