The American billionaires behind the proposed Ksi Lisims gas terminal and PRGT pipeline are back in the news – thanks to deceased child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Apollo Global Management, led by chairman and CEO Leon Black, was an early investor in Texas-based Western LNG and its British Columbia gas megaproject, back in 2018.

Black also paid Jeffrey Epstein at least $170 million for, he claims, “financial advice.” Black has denied any involvement in Epstein’s crimes. But as New York Times reporter David Enrich pointed out this week, it’s hard to believe that’s the whole story.

“Black, one of the richest, most powerful people in the world, certainly on Wall Street, has the ability to access anyone in the world that he wants to help get advice on how to deal with taxes,” said Enrich on The Daily. “Who does he turn to? Jeffrey Epstein.”

Black is fighting a lawsuit from a woman who accuses him of raping her as a teenager at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. He paid $62.5 million to avoid any future legal claims in the US Virgin Islands, where Epstein owned a private island.

In 2021, Black was forced to step down from Apollo over his ties to Epstein, leaving the private equity firm – and its LNG investments – in the hands of co-founder Marc Rowan. Black remains a major shareholder at Apollo, holding billions in company stock.

Western LNG is now waiting for B.C. government approval for its Ksi Lisims floating gas terminal, backed by Apollo. Although supported politically by the Nisga’a treaty government, the project is 100 per cent American owned.

Trump’s inner circle

Epstein, who owned a private jet nicknamed the Lolita Express, was at the centre of a global network that included Apollo chair Leon Black and U.S. president Donald Trump.

Last week the Wall Street Journal revealed a salacious 2003 birthday message to Epstein, signed by Trump, that said “we have certain things in common, Jeffrey” and ended with the phrase “may every day be another wonderful secret”. 

Trump called it a “hoax” and launched a $10 billion lawsuit against the newspaper. But six years after Epstein’s death, the scandal refuses to go away.

Trump is the LNG industry’s most powerful promoter, signing executive orders to unleash “American Energy Dominance” through a dramatic ramp-up of fracking and U.S.-controlled LNG trade around the Pacific Ocean.

Trump’s focus on natural gas is no accident. One of the biggest donors behind Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign was another New York billionaire, the “King of Wall Street,” Steve Schwarzman.

Schwarzman’s trillion-dollar private equity firm Blackstone is now the biggest investor backing Ksi Lisims LNG and the PRGT pipeline. Schwarzman remains a key advisor to Trump.

Blackstone’s gas gamble

Schwarzman is betting big on LNG exports, hoping to force developing countries in Asia to buy fuel from American companies to generate electricity for decades to come.

Blackstone announced last week it is also plowing $25 billion into gas-powered data centres in fracking country in Pennsylvania, to “expand America’s leading position in the AI revolution.”

These methane-burning supercomputers are notorious for polluting cities like Memphis, Tennessee – where X owner Elon Musk trucked in 35 gas turbines to feed ever-more electricity into his AI project, Grok.

It’s not just nitrogen oxides and sulphur pollution spewing out of Grok’s smokestacks. The machine soon started spreading antisemitism and praising Hitler in public posts on X.

“Natural” gas is quite literally the fuel powering the MAGA project. From AI content to job automation to new weapons and surveillance systems, it is key to the wealth accumulation and global reach of the right-wing billionaires behind Trump.

Handing those Wall Street firms even more control over Canada’s gas deposits, including both major pipelines to the Pacific coast, is a mistake.

B.C. politicians like to talk about pipelines as fountains of wealth creation, pumping our goods out to grateful customers. Instead these American straws are drinking our milkshake, like Daniel Day-Lewis’s character in There Will Be Blood.

Chopping the tentacle

Despite the wealth and power of the billionaire cartel driving fracked gas expansion around the world, there are signs the bubble is about to pop.

Wall Street CEOs are only human, as the existence of pimps like Jeffrey Epstein reminds us. And they make catastrophic mistakes on a regular basis (which all of us have to pay for).

Right now they are betting against renewable technologies that get cheaper and more abundant every year, destroying demand growth for vehicle fuel and now, gas-fired electricity.

Men like Trump, Black and Schwarzman assume America will be able to dominate the world forever, dictating terms, uttering threats and always escaping accountability for its crimes. Those are not sure bets.

Even now, the working-class base that propelled Trump to victory is reckoning with a horrible truth. The man they elected to expose the inner workings of a depraved deep state cabal has no interest in doing so. Maybe because he’s been part of it all along. 

A political crisis is brewing that is already knocking the White House off its agenda.

Meanwhile, crucial Japanese investment in Trump’s pet LNG projects has not materialized. The province of B.C. has still not approved the Ksi Lisims LNG terminal. And Prime Minister Mark Carney has yet to throw his weight behind a specific pipeline.

In the summertime lull, industry-funded mouthpieces lob increasingly desperate attacks at groups like Dogwood for pointing out the truth: Ksi Lisims LNG is owned by American billionaires. 

The Nisga’a government does have a stake in PRGT, although the monetary value is reportedly negligible. Western LNG and its Wall Street backers have chosen an American military contractor to oversee pipeline construction.

Not too late to change course

Indigenous politicians and provincial MLAs are equally capable of getting caught up in bad decisions. But when new information comes to light, those decisions should be reconsidered. Witness the Gitanyow hereditary chiefs burning their 10-year-old pipeline agreements and barring PRGT from their territory.

British Columbia is well positioned to choose a different path than Trump and his inner circle of Lolita Express-riding, “drill baby drill” American billionaires.

The province has direct trade links with Asia, highly skilled and educated workers, and an electrical grid powered by fresh water that falls from the sky. Indigenous nations have additional wind, solar and geothermal projects ready to build. And we have transmission lines going to California, the fourth-largest economy in the world.

Cancelling LNG terminals would free up gigawatts of electricity that could be used here at home, or sold at a premium to neighbouring states. It would also stop a spike in energy prices for domestic customers, and save billions in taxpayer handouts to foreign investors.

Sure, we can hand our resources to the Wall Street plutocrats fuelling Donald Trump’s political project. Or we can ally with First Nations, democratic U.S. states and other countries around the Pacific, to usher in a world beyond oil and gas expansion.