Asia/Pacific

After the $5 billion-plus expansion of the Panama Canal is dedicated this Sunday, June 26, the first “New Panamax” vessel scheduled to pass through the canal’s new, longer, wider locks will be the Lycaste Peace, a Very Large Gas Carrier (VLGC) that is transporting propane from Enterprise Products Partners’ Houston Ship Channel export terminal to Tokyo Bay in Japan. What remains to be seen, though, is how many other supersized vessels carrying propane, liquefied natural gas (LNG) or other hydrocarbons will follow, and how soon. Today, we mark the formal opening of the newly enlarged Atlantic-Pacific short-cut with a look both at the game-changing potential of the expanded canal and the realities of today’s energy and shipping markets.

Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) already has approved export licenses for nine LNG export projects in British Columbia that, if all built, would demand a total of up to 16 Bcf/d of Western Canada natural gas. Several other LNG export projects also are under development in BC. In reality, though, at most only a handful of all these projects will be financed and constructed. The BC government’s optimistic estimate is that five liquefaction “trains” with a combined gas throughput of 3.5 Bcf/d (to produce up to 25 million metric tons/year of LNG) will be online by 2023. The questions then are, what will it take for a project to advance, and which developers are making the most headway so far. Today, in the second of our Slip Sliding Away series, we start to assess BC’s top LNG export contenders, including a few late-arriving long shots that could surprise.