On the eve of B.C.’s 44th general election, FortisBC’s bid to significantly expand its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production was given a key green light by the B.C. government.

Less than 24 hours before David Eby’s snap election call sent cabinet ministers out onto the campaign trail, Environment and Parks Minister Tamara Davidson and Energy and Climate Solutions Minister Adrian Dix announced the project received its environmental assessment certificate. The approval was issued roughly two months after the final public comment period on the project ended.

Environmental groups condemned the government’s speedy approval as a rubber stamp.

“Approving more new fossil fuel infrastructure in a climate crisis is reckless and irresponsible, and yet more evidence that Premier David Eby is happy to break his past promises on fighting climate change,” Isabel Siu-Zmuidzinas, climate campaigner with Stand.earth, said.

The final press release from this version of the Eby government published on Sept. 21 touted the major expansion at Tilbury — a tenfold increase in the facility’s liquefied natural gas production capacity — as “a major economic, clean-energy opportunity for B.C.” But even if the expansion is powered by electricity, as planned, experts worry chemical emissions from the facility could affect the health of people living and working in nearby communities, including Delta, Richmond and New Westminster.

The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment has called for the B.C. government to fully assess the potential health impacts of the LNG industry, from the fracking fields in northern B.C. to LNG production and shipping facilities, like LNG Canada in Kitimat.

“If this industry is safe, the province should be willing to prove it before our families and our healthcare system pay the price,” Dr. Kai Irani, B.C. representative for the doctors’ association, said in the wake of the Tilbury Phase 2 approval.

FortisBC’s Tilbury LNG plant currently produces about 250,000 tonnes of LNG per year, which is used as fuel by some marine vessels and to heat homes and businesses. The Phase 2 expansion could allow the facility to produce up to 3.4 million tonnes each year, with roughly 2.5 million set aside for export. That’s slightly more than the 2.1 million tonnes Woodfibre LNG in Squamish expects to export once it begins operations.

The project’s environmental assessment certificate includes 18 conditions aimed at mitigating its impacts, including air quality monitoring and emission reduction. B.C.’s environmental assessment will inform the federal government’s own assessment of the project and pending decision on whether to approve Tilbury’s expansion.

FortisBC has been working on beefing up its operations at the Tilbury site for about a decade. In July, Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions Adrian Dix announced the government’s support of an earlier expansion proposal, known as Phase 1B, which will add a marine jetty to the site and increase production capacity to 650,000 tonnes of LNG per year. Once Phase 1B is completed, Tilbury LNG will be able to fuel more marine vessels with LNG, which is a lower-emission fuel than the diesel many ships use for power. 

A July cabinet order signed by Dix exempted Phase 1B from review by the B.C. Utilities Commission. That means the expansion will not undergo an independent assessment to examine whether it is necessary and serves the public interest. Last year, the B.C. government also exempted the North Coast transmission line from such a review.

Dix’s order prompted one of his fellow cabinet ministers to take the unusual step of speaking out against a government decision. Kelly Greene, who served as Minister of Emergency Preparedness and Climate Readiness, said she was disappointed with the decision to advance the Tilbury expansion. She has since decided not to seek re-election in the Richmond—Steveston riding she won in 2020.

The order also created the option for First Nations co-ownership of the project, which the Musqueam Indian Band has expressed interest in. 

Tilbury LNG Phase 2 is a separate proposal for the same site in Delta that would see the construction of a new LNG storage tank with a capacity of up to 142,400 cubic metres, about 57 Olympic swimming pools. There would also be new gas liquefaction facilities capable of producing up to 7,700 tonnes of LNG per day, along with other infrastructure needed to support the expanded operations.

B.C. is betting on major projects as Canada looks to open new markets and reduce its reliance on the U.S. Tilbury Phase 2 is among the 41 energy and mining projects the province has identified as a priority. 

Here’s what you need to know.

Why this project?

Tilbury’s Phase 2 expansion will boost the gas system in the Lower Mainland and help meet peak demand for heat during cold weather, according to the provincial government. Building the project will support 1,210 jobs, the province’s major projects site states — though how many people will be employed after the expansion is built is not yet known.

The project description does not mention the LNG export aspect of the expansion.

FortisBC’s website describes the Phase 2 expansion as a way to “continue reliably serving our customers in a lower-carbon energy future while providing economic growth and benefits to local and Indigenous communities.”

Increasing Tilbury’s LNG production capacity will allow the company to “respond to the growing demand for LNG as a lower-carbon fuel,” according to the site.

In an emailed statement, a FortisBC spokesperson highlighted that the Tilbury facility runs on electricity and therefore has “a lower carbon footprint compared to fossil fuel-based power sources commonly used in LNG production elsewhere.”

“The proposed Phase 2 expansion will be required to meet all applicable regulatory, environmental and permitting requirements, including those established by Metro Vancouver.”

What’s different about Tilbury LNG?

While the other LNG facilities operating or under construction in B.C. are located at some distance from nearby communities, Tilbury LNG is an urban facility.

It sits on the banks of the Fraser River, just across the water from Richmond and downstream from New Westminster, making it the only urban LNG facility in the province. Highway 17, one of the Lower Mainland’s major transportation corridors, runs right alongside it.

“It is a 10-minute walk … to the nearest brewery,” Anna Barford, oceans campaigner for Stand.earth, said in an interview. 

Loaded LNG tankers leaving the Tilbury facility will have to transit the south arm of the Fraser River mouth to make their way out into the Salish Sea, a busy shipping corridor that could become much more crowded over the next few years if and when a number of other projects come to fruition.

How does this fit into a bigger conversation about shipping traffic?

At Roberts Bank, just south of where LNG tankers from Tilbury would enter the Salish Sea, the Port of Vancouver is planning to expand its existing container port by 50 per cent. If that $3.5-billion proposed expansion goes ahead, the port location could handle an additional 2.4 million 20-foot (six-metre) shipping containers each year, adding hundreds of container ship transits to the Salish Sea’s waters.

Meanwhile, the completed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is expected to increase tanker traffic in the area by nearly 350 tankers per year.

And then there’s Alberta’s proposed pipeline to the Pacific coast, which would also terminate at Roberts Bank. The tanker terminal would be built to accommodate very large crude oil carriers, massive ships capable of carrying 2.2 million barrels of oil that are longer than three World Cup soccer pitches laid end to end.

“These are enormous vessels that the Tilbury tankers are going to navigate around — they will each need to sort of make way for each other,” Barford said. “This is also critical habitat for southern resident killer whales, who we know vessel traffic is a problem for.”

The Environmental Assessment Office will consider potential impacts on southern resident killer whales and other local species and their habitats as part of its evaluation of the Tilbury LNG Phase 2 proposal. Measures by FortisBC to mitigate those impacts will also be assessed.

What exactly will the expansion look like?

To enable the facility to process more gas, the Phase 2 expansion includes a ground flare — basically, an outlet to burn off excess gas when needed. Instead of a flare stack like the one high above the LNG Canada facility in Kitimat, B.C., Tilbury LNG will burn off excess gas at ground level. 

The ground flare option was chosen because it “limits the opportunity for wildlife interactions with flames and greatly reduces noise and flame-related visual effects,” a FortisBC spokesperson said in an email.

The expansion would increase Tilbury LNG’s emissions to one million tonnes per year, according to a report from the Pembina Institute. Most of those emissions — 0.7 million tonnes — would come from so-called upstream emissions, related to the fracked gas and its transportation to Tilbury LNG via pipelines. The other 0.3 million tonnes of emissions would come from the facility’s operations. 

However, the assessment excludes emissions during the start-up phase, a time when LNG facilities often flare more gas than they would once they are established. Flaring involves burning off gas as waste rather than shipping it or using it. LNG Canada, which has been operational for two years now, has been flaring up to 15 times more gas than it was expected to, due at least in part to an issue with the facility’s flare tip. LNG Canada reported flaring 350 million cubic metres of gas in 2025, according to figures reported to the BC Energy Regulator — 10 per cent of all the gas transported to the plant that year. 

What are the possible health impacts for people living near the project?

Experts say significantly expanding an LNG facility in an urban area raises a range of concerns, including possible impacts on human health.

Emissions from an expanded Tilbury LNG will be entering an airshed already permeated with pollution, Tim Takaro, a physician-scientist in environmental medicine, said. Exhaust from vehicles, including heavy trucks travelling to and from port facilities, mingle with emissions from industrial operations along the Fraser River. 

“There’s just no reason to build a new fossil energy facility in a populated area,” he said.

New Westminster and Richmond had some of the highest levels of nitrogen dioxide of any community in B.C. in 2024, according to a report from the BC Lung Foundation. Nitrogen dioxide is a product of high-temperature fossil fuel combustion and is pushed into the air from vehicle tailpipes and industrial smokestacks. Long-term exposure is linked to impaired lung growth in children and more frequent asthma attacks.

For Takaro, also a member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, Tilbury LNG’s impact needs to be considered in the context of existing air quality conditions. 

“What does this facility add to the existing air quality?” he said. “Because that’s what people breathe — they don’t just breathe the new part.”

The Tilbury expansion’s ground flare is also a point of concern for Takaro.

“Their flare is going to be at ground level, which is, of course, where people live,” he said.

B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Office is in the final stages of evaluating the Phase 2 expansion. The last public comment period ended in July and the office received 631 completed surveys about the project.One of the survey’s 18 questions asked respondents to select any issues they believed had not been appropriately assessed or that lacked information. A majority of respondents flagged greenhouse gas emissions as an area of concern. Impacts on wildlife, fish and habitat were also selected on a majority of surveys.

Ground flares are often about the height of a single-story building, said Tim Doty, a former employee of Texas’s environmental agency who spent years inspecting oil and gas facilities across the state.

“In theory, that’s going to bring the emissions closer to the community,” he said. 

“I would expect this facility, as it expands, to further impact the community and air quality around Delta and the Vancouver [area].”

Tilbury Phase 2’s environmental assessment takes into account current air quality and modelling of the expansion’s effects, according to an emailed statement from the assessment office.

The federal government’s pending decision can now be informed by B.C.’s environmental assessment. This provincial environmental green light allows the federal process to continue moving, saving Tilbury LNG Phase 2 from lingering in limbo as the snap election unfolds.

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