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After years of construction, nearly 100 arrests, billions in government subsidies and dozens of environmental infractions, B.C.’s long-promised liquefied natural gas, or LNG, export industry is poised to start shipping overseas this year.
It’s been more than a decade since an idea to transform a little northern B.C. industry town into the first community in Canada to export LNG across the Pacific Ocean was just a twinkle in a corporate boardroom. This year, LNG Canada will send its first shipments from Kitimat, B.C., to Asia, marking Canada’s entry into the global LNG market.
At the recent annual BC Natural Resources Forum in Prince George, B.C., Premier David Eby signalled his support for the nascent liquefied natural gas sector, calling LNG Canada “one of the biggest economic projects in Canadian history.”
Most of B.C.’s natural gas is extracted out of the ground using a method called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and liquefying it for ocean transport is energy intensive. From the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipeline to the publicly funded North Coast transmission power line, infrastructure is being readied to service the LNG industry.
“The success of our natural resource sectors is key to our success as a province,” Eby said.
As those first shipments are loaded into the bellies of massive ocean carriers, here’s what you need to know about the big year ahead for liquefied natural gas in B.C.
The first phase of LNG Canada, a liquefaction and export facility on the shores of the Douglas Channel in Kitimat, will be fully operational this year. The fossil fuel development has been touted as the largest private investment in Canadian history.
Fed by the controversial Coastal GasLink pipeline, completed in late 2023 following years of opposition from Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs and their supporters, the Kitimat facility fired up its smokestacks last fall as it began flaring off gas in preparation for commencing operations this spring. The liquefaction and export plant will power its first phase of operations — which will produce around 14 million tonnes of LNG annually — by burning some of the gas it receives from Coastal GasLink. An approved second phase, possibly powered by hydroelectricity, would double production.
Teresa Waddington, a vice-president with LNG Canada, told The Narwhal the facility is more than 95 per cent complete and “commissioning and start-up activities are well underway.”
“We remain on track to ship first cargoes by the middle of 2025,” Waddington wrote in an email.
The gas will be sent overseas, mainly to buyers in Japan and South Korea. LNG Canada is a consortium of multinational companies, led by Shell Canada, that include Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas, Japanese tech giant Mitsubishi and Kogas, South Korea’s national gas company.
Both Shell and Petronas own significant fracking operations in B.C.’s northeast, where the province’s natural gas reserves are located. Gas extraction to feed LNG Canada has already begun. In 2024, Shell did initial drilling work on 73 B.C. wells, roughly equivalent to the amount it has drilled over the past six years combined, according to BOE Report, an industry publication.
Construction on Cedar LNG, a floating liquefaction and export facility majority owned by the Haisla Nation, started in July 2024.
The facility is being built a few kilometres from the larger LNG Canada development. In a recent update posted to its website, Cedar LNG said it expects construction activities to peak in 2026 and foreign-built components of the floating facility to arrive in 2028. In the meantime, the company applied for several proposed changes to the approved environmental assessment certificate, to accommodate a modified design for anchoring boats and rerouting power lines. The changes are under review, with a public engagement period opening on Jan. 28.
When operating, Cedar LNG will also receive its gas supply from the Coastal GasLink pipeline. It plans to export around three million tonnes of LNG per year, sending shipments across the Pacific Ocean to buyers in Asian countries.
To Haisla Nation leadership, the project represents a sorely needed source of revenue for a community long left out of any financial gains from resources.
“Today is about changing the course of history for my nation and Indigenous Peoples everywhere in history, where Indigenous people were left on the sidelines of economic development in their territories,” Crystal Smith, Haisla’s elected chief councillor, said when the project was approved in 2023.
At the natural resources forum, Eby touted Cedar LNG as an “unprecedented economic opportunity for the region.”
At the Prince George gathering, Eby also nodded to a proposed liquefaction facility that, if built, would be the second largest in Canada.
“We also have the Nisga’a-led Ksi Lisims liquefied natural gas project, a nearly $10-billion investment,” Eby said.
Ksi Lisims LNG, a proposed liquefaction and export facility that would be built at the north end of Pearse Island, a few kilometres from the Nass River estuary near the Alaska border, is currently undergoing environmental assessment. If approved by the B.C. government, the plant would produce up to 12 million tonnes of LNG annually.
The Nisga’a Lisims Government and Texas-based Western LNG are partners in both the Ksi Lisims LNG project and the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission, or PRGT, pipeline, which would supply Ksi Lisims. In a statement on its website, Western LNG noted B.C.’s environmental assessment office will finalize its Ksi Lisims assessment report this spring and submit a referral package to the federal and provincial environment ministers. The company also noted the environmental assessment office is expected to make decisions about whether or not to allow the PRGT pipeline to proceed this spring.
Earlier this month, Western LNG announced it had secured more than $150 million in investment for its liquefaction facility and the pipeline.
“Ksi Lisims LNG and PRGT are designed to meet or exceed Canada’s rigorous environmental standards and will help meet global energy needs while driving regional prosperity,” Davis Thames, Western LNG’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
Like the Haisla elected leadership, some Nisga’a leaders maintain LNG is a game-changer when it comes to economic opportunities.
“The Nisg̱a’a Nation has long tried to establish an economic base in the Nass Valley,” Nisg̱a’a Nation president Eva Clayton said last year. “LNG will be a transformational opportunity for us to build our economy.”
To Clayton and other Nisga’a leadership, the projects provide a path to economic self-determination, a key commitment outlined in B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act action plan. A representative of the Nisga’a government declined to comment, instead referring The Narwhal to publicly available information.
According to the Ksi Lisims assessment report published last November, “economic development opportunities and reconciliation” form a key part of the province’s action plan and “Ksi Lisims LNG would serve as a means towards reaching this goal, since Nisga’a Nation is one of the proponents of Ksi Lisims LNG and also through providing training and employment opportunities for the community.”
But some neighbouring nations have expressed opposition to both projects. Last summer, as preliminary construction of the pipeline began on Nisga’a lands, Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs set up a blockade and later announced the creation of an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area on lands the pipeline would cut through.
FortisBC continues to move through environmental review of its plans to expand the Tilbury Island facility in Delta, B.C. The expansion project, according to the company’s description, would supply gas to overseas markets and provide fuel for ships travelling to and from the greater Vancouver area, while also increasing the amount of fuel kept on hand in case of local emergency.
Last year, both the B.C. and federal governments approved FortisBC’s plans to build a new marine jetty. Now, the company needs approval to build infrastructure that would allow it to liquefy more gas. According to the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office, the plans include construction and operation of “a new LNG storage tank with a working volume of up to 142,400 cubic metres, new liquefaction facilities with capacity of up to 7,700 tonnes per day of LNG production, natural gas receiving facilities and supporting infrastructure.”
If the expansion is approved, the LNG plant would increase its annual output to more than three million tonnes. The public can comment on the company’s draft application until early March.
Construction started last fall on Woodfibre LNG, majority-owned by Indonesian billionaire Sukanto Tanoto’s Pacific Energy Corporation, on the shores of Howe Sound, a few kilometres from Squamish, B.C.
According to Woodfibre’s website, it is working directly in the ocean “during the marine window of least risk,” a requirement of federal and Squamish Nation regulations. That window closes at the end of January.
In December, the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office found Woodfibre LNG was out of compliance with an order it previously issued and noted this month the company may be liable for an administrative penalty. Government inspectors also found the company was out of compliance with regulations around transport of its workers and issued a warning letter.
Woodfibre LNG was also “non-compliant with requirements related to storing hazardous materials, providing required documentation related to the death of a great blue heron and the release of project water into the marine environment that occurred due to insufficient capacity of the water treatment system during heavy rain periods in October at the project site,” according to the assessment office.
When in operation, Woodfibre will produce 2.1 million tonnes of LNG annually.
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