PETRONAS TO SPEND UP TO RM50 BILLION ON B.C LNG PROJECTS

By : Hiew King Cheu

Two new liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities will be built in northwestern British Columbia (B.C.) Canada in the next two years by Malaysia’s national oil company, PETRONAS, which announced Tuesday that it will spend up to $16 billion (RM50 billion) on the projects.

Petronas said it will invest between $9 billion to $11 billion to construct the LNG liquefaction plants, which will be built on Lelu Island, off the coast of B.C. in the Port Edward district south of Prince Rupert. Another $5 billion will be invested in a 750 km long pipe, to be built by TransCanada Corp that will supply gas to the two plants.

The news was announced by Arif Mahmood, the Petronas Vice-president of corporate planning in an email to The Associated Press on June 11, 2013.

The ADUN Luyang Hiew King Cheu said he was shocked to learn that our country is using such a huge sum of the people’s money to invest into a foreign country’s gas project. RM52 billion is really a huge sum of money and how much benefits can this investment in oversea bring back to our country? Petronas on the other hand why they did not even consider to put that RM52 billion in Sabah to develop our oil and gas industries?

In Sabah, we are desperately in need of such investment in our oil and gas industries, and yet very sadly, Petronas has ignored this fact and use our oil money to help other country to develop their gas industries. It is sad still, Petronas is sending our precious gas to Bintulu Sarawak while we Sabahans have not benefit from it a bit. Hiew commented that if this is not a solid proof, then what it is.

The Petronas should take care of the Sabahan first, and by right we should be the first one to benefit from our oil and gas production. It is a known fact that we have been deprived of our wealth extracted from the ground for many years ago, and now it looks it is going to be worse. What is the logic for spending our money into helping other country to developing their LNG projects? What happen to us after 35 years of having oil production in Sabah, and we can’t even have our own refineries? The hard truth is that Sabah still remains very poor and backward. We did not enjoy the prosperity, rapid economic growth and fast development in the state for sure, even though we have such a huge volume of oil and gas production.

The Sabahan will have to think double hard about this, and is this the way that the government and the Petronas should be treating us and continue to deprive our rights for a better future? Some one must explain on this and do something about it.