The B.C. government made four human-caused administrative errors leading to a roughly $1.5-billion overestimation of natural gas revenues in its latest budget.

That’s according to senior officials in the ministries of finance and energy who on Tuesday provided reporters with a summary of the errors identified during a closed briefing.

The briefing comes less than a week after Business in Vancouver published an investigation into a budget error—one that experts maintain could reduce B.C.’s projected gas revenue by an average of $2.5 billion over five years.

That reporting relied on analyses by multiple experts, all of whom said the government appeared to have failed to deduct transportation and processing costs before calculating its projected royalties—a basic math error.

The much higher figure and its causes were disputed by senior ministry officials who, speaking on background, said transportation and processing costs had nothing to do with the mistake.

Instead, they pointed to a chain of four administrative errors—including unit and currency conversions—that stacked up and led to a serious overestimation of the share of net gas profits the government would capture from industry.

The largest error identified by senior officials was caused when a formula was incorrectly dragged across a spreadsheet cell. Another error was triggered when technical staff failed to properly convert gas units, while the final two occurred when data was inadvertently used from the previous fiscal year, officials said.

Altogether, the errors impacted half of the 22 third-party gas price forecasts the government relies on to determine the share of net gas profits government—and therefore taxpayers—should receive when industry extracts the Crown resource.

The errors led to an average overestimation of gas royalties of $292 per year over the next five years. That figure rose as high as $378 million in the 2028-29 fiscal year. Altogether, the ministries estimate the error overestimated government gas royalties by $1.46 billion over five years.

Senior officials said they will update the budget in a quarterly report on Sept. 14. The ministries have also actively engaged experts to verify their future work, officials said.

According to ministry officials, the errors will not impact the government’s new royalty framework, slated to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2027.

That’s despite previous comments made by Energy Minister Adrian Dix that the new royalty framework’s projected $2.4-billion in gains are based on numbers in this year’s budget.

Treaty 8 First Nations had previously raised concerns that the new royalty framework was being built on flawed budget numbers—a mistake that could lead government to forgo billions of dollars in gas royalties over the coming years.

A ministry official could not provide a figure for how much of Dix’s $2.4 billion in estimated benefits would be at risk because of the errors.

The province moved to replace the old gas royalty system five years ago after an independent assessment found the previous system was broken and had unnecessarily hemorrhaged billions of dollars to industry.

The government had previously committed to creating a system that would capture 50 per cent of net gas profits after production costs are deducted.

Experts working with Treaty 8 First Nations estimate the new system would only capture between 11-14 per cent of net profits under most price scenarios.

They said the information provided by the ministry Tuesday does not have enough information to be properly analyzed.

Despite the error, the province said it has no plans to pause rollout of the new royalty system. Officials would provide more details of the plan in the fall.

B.C.’s opposition parties have seized on the government’s errors following BIV’s investigation.

The B.C. Greens’ requested the auditor general launch its own investigation Monday into the budget errors and their consequences for the gas royalty system. It called for the new system to be paused in the meantime.

Gavin Dew, finance critic for the BC Conservatives, described the errors as a “scandal of sufficient magnitude to bring down the government.”

As the province’s main opposition party, the BC Conservatives are facing their own challenges: seven MLAs have abandoned the party in recent weeks. Those departures have reduced their ranks by roughly a third since the last election.

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