Developers have been kicking around plans for LNG exports from British Columbia (BC), Canada’s westernmost province, for more than a decade, with more than 20 projects on the drawing board at one point. That long list has been whittled down to just three that have reached the point of final investment decision (FID) — a hard plan to proceed to construction and startup. One of those projects, LNG Canada, should be sending out LNG as soon as the end of this year, placing Canada firmly on the map of LNG-exporting nations. In today’s RBN blog, we take a closer look at the three projects and hint at plans by a handful of contenders vying to join the LNG export party.
In the late 2000s, it seemed all too easy to trip over a new Canadian LNG export project. At one point in 2012, there were as many as 21 projects being proposed or in the early stages of development, which — had all of them been built — would have summed to more than 40 Bcf/d, or almost three times Western Canada’s natural gas production at the time (see More Than a Feeling? and Slip Sliding Away).
Needless to say, more than a decade and a half later, nearly all these projects have fallen by the wayside, victims of regulatory paralysis, lack of investor interest, environmental opposition, inability to lock in gas reserves and a parallel delivery pipeline, or some combination of these. However, a few projects pushed on through the years, boosted by the attraction of having direct access across the Pacific Ocean to the LNG-hungry markets of Asia (i.e., no Panama Canal delays) and the proximity to the immense unconventional gas reserves of the celebrated Montney formation that spans parts of northeastern BC and western Alberta (see Figure 1 below).
Figure 1. Canada’s West Coast LNG Projects. Source: RBN
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