Companies drilling and fracking for
natural gas in northeast B.C. were bankrolled by the province to the
tune of $703 million last year, a 45 per cent increase over the previous
year when companies were handed more than $485 million in credits.

As deep well credits are used to reduce
the amount of royalties companies pay to the province when the
production process has ended, that means B.C. is increasingly out of
pocket even though the amount of gas produced in B.C. has risen more
than 70 per cent over the last decade.

The total in the deep well credit account now amounts to $2.2 billion.