Victoria blamed a dragged spreadsheet cell. Its own statement says it knew in July.

On 1 September Karin Larsen's piece, "B.C. energy ministry says 4 calculation mistakes led to $1.5B budget error," led with the ministry's briefing: the biggest mistake applied a U.S.-to-Canadian conversion to figures already in Canadian dollars. "A formula was incorrectly dragged across cells," a ministry representative said. A spokesperson called it "a human-caused and regrettable error made by a mistake on a spreadsheet." The piece noted that Treaty 8 experts flagged the problem to Premier David Eby, Energy Minister Adrian Dix and then-finance minister Brenda Bailey "earlier this summer," that it "wasn't until Business in Vancouver broke the story last week that the government acknowledged the problem," and that an updated fiscal outlook is expected later this month.

The day before, the same reporter's "B.C.'s $1.5B budget error raises questions about gas royalties, transparency" carried Olewiler's doubts about the currency explanation ("I don't know where the exchange rate comes in"), quoted the Treaty 8 letter's claim that the forecasts inflated the plant-inlet price "by 76 per cent to more than 100 per cent," and quoted Conservative finance critic Gavin Dew asking "did the premier or the energy minister lie about it? What did they know and when did they know it?" It noted CBC had requested interviews with Eby and Dix.

Business in Vancouver's Stefan Labbé broke the story on 26 August with Olewiler's analysis that the province had failed to subtract transportation and processing costs from its price forecasts, an error she put at roughly $500 million a year. The government's admission came that afternoon, at $292 million a year, with a different explanation. BIV followed on 27 August with the 14 July letter and the 29 June recording, and on 1 September with the briefing's four errors and the $1.46-billion total.

Western Standard's Alex Zoltan called the government's account "fishy" on 28 August. Gavin Dew told BIV the affair was a "scandal of sufficient magnitude to bring down the government," and told CBC his third and most serious question was whether the premier or the energy minister lied. Independent commentary has generally treated the spreadsheet as the government's preferred ending and the July timeline as the story.