In 2025, the LNG Canada export terminal burned around 350 million cubic metres of gas, or 10 per cent of all gas transported to the plant that year.
Photo: Marty Clemens / The Narwhal
In late February, reporter Matt Simmons sent me a message: a U.K.-based journalist wanted to talk “satellite stuff” related to B.C.’s growing liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry.
Wil Crisp, who runs a non-profit media outlet called Point Source, believed the data he was looking at pointed to something striking — that LNG Canada, the country’s first large-scale LNG export facility, might have flared more gas than any other plant on earth last year.
“Wil got the numbers from a reporting database the BC Energy Regulator pointed me to,” Matt recounted. “When he sent me the totals, we were both a bit dumbfounded.”
“But we hadn’t done the math on how much gas they’d burned last year,” Matt told me. “Cross-checking satellite data with these publicly available records showed us the numbers were way higher than expected.”
How much higher? According to data estimates put together by researchers with the Colorado School of Mines and provided to the World Bank, the worst-polluting LNG export facility in 2024 was a terminal in Nigeria, which burned around 234 million cubic metres. Flaring from LNG Canada in 2025 was around 50 per cent higher than that.
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In 2018, journalist Cameron Fenton found a grizzly footprint in a remote valley in the North Cascades mountain range that straddles the B.C.-Washington border. He’s been looking for them ever since.
Cam spent six weeks in the North Cascades last summer researching a book about the bears and their disappearance. With his fieldwork photos in hand, we linked up with Tsilhqot’in and syilx illustrator Karlene Harvey to reimagine grizzlies on the landscape.
The result is this beautiful feature that includes mixed media, with Karlene using illustration and watercolour over top the original photos by Cam.
The Narwhal is ramping up its reporting in Ontario — and the clock is ticking down to apply to join our team!
We’re hiring a BIPOC reporting fellow to cover Queen’s Park and the ways policy affects people in racialized communities. It’s a brand-new opportunity that we’re very excited about, with the right candidate starting at the beginning of June.
Ontario’s drinking water is protected by little-known committees, tied up in conservation authority changes By Fatima Syed and Matt McIntosh
Over the past month, Fatima and Matt spoke to a dozen sources, received a leaked document and interviewed Ontario’s environment minister for this story.
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Your access to our journalism is free, always. Sign up for our newsletter for investigative reporting on the natural world in B.C. — and across Canada — you won’t find anywhere else.
