Coastal GasLink

LNG Canada, under construction for nearly six years on Canada’s West Coast, is rapidly approaching the time when first gas will be entering the plant for testing and calibration of equipment, marking an important transformation for the Western Canadian natural gas market. This will kick off what will likely be about a yearlong testing process before officially entering commercial service in mid-2025. In today’s RBN blog, we consider daily gas flow data from the startup of similar-sized LNG plants on the U.S. Gulf Coast and develop a conjectural timeline for LNG Canada to help assess how much gas will flow to the site — and how soon — and when LNG exports might begin. 

Despite many challenges, natural gas production in Western Canada has been hitting record highs this year, powered by what seems to be the inexhaustible energy of the unconventional Montney formation. This immense resource remains the primary focus of most Canadian gas producers, and those that operate in the British Columbia portion of the Montney know they have their work cut out for them in the next few years if they are to meet the growing need for gas, especially when the LNG Canada export terminal comes online mid-decade. In today’s RBN blog, we update the Montney’s production and productivity trends in British Columbia and evaluate whether enough progress is being made.

Global LNG markets have been in overdrive this winter — it seems the world just can’t get enough of the super-cooled natural gas. Moreover, with long-term LNG demand growth in Asia appearing robust well into the next decade, the time would seem ripe to reconsider expanded export opportunities from Canada’s West Coast, one of the closest and potentially largest sources of LNG for Asian buyers. With one major LNG export project already under construction, at least one more awaiting the final go-ahead, and two more serious proposals having emerged last year, Canada’s outlook for additional LNG sales to Asia is clearly bright. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss recent developments regarding Canadian LNG projects.

It will still be a few years until Canada joins the ranks of nations exporting natural gas in the form of LNG. Until then, a great deal of work has to be completed on both the LNG Canada liquefaction and export facility in Kitimat, BC, and the primary gas pipeline linked to it: the Coastal GasLink. Unlike most LNG export sites in the U.S., which can receive feedgas from multiple production basins via an array of major trunklines, the LNG Canada plant will be relying on gas supplies from primarily one basin: the Montney in Western Canada. And all that feedgas will be transported across British Columbia through one mammoth pipeline. In today’s blog, we take a closer look at the small number of pipelines that will supply gas from the Montney to Coastal GasLink for eventual delivery to LNG Canada.

By the middle of the decade, LNG Canada should be sending its first cargoes of Canadian-sourced LNG to Asian markets. More importantly, Canada for the first time will have an alternative export market for its natural gas supplies — for more than 50 years, piping gas south to the U.S. has been its only option. But getting gas from the Montney and Duvernay production areas to the British Columbia coast is no easy task. It requires the construction of an entirely new, 2.1-Bcf/d pipeline — expandable to 5 Bcf/d — much of it over very rugged terrain. Coastal GasLink, as the planned pipe is known, has also faced major regulatory hurdles. Today, we conclude a two-part series with a look at where the pipeline project stands today.

When plans for LNG Canada, a big LNG export project on the British Columbia coast, were sanctioned two years ago this month, the move came as a welcome sign that Western Canadian natural gas producers might finally be able to break their long-standing reliance on just one export customer: the U.S. Access to Asian and other overseas gas markets became a high priority, in part because U.S. demand for Canadian gas had been sagging for years as production in the Marcellus/Utica and other U.S. plays came to meet the vast majority of domestic needs. But while construction on LNG Canada has steadily advanced, there are signs that delays could be mounting. Today, we begin a two-part update on this all-important Canadian LNG export project and its accompanying Coastal GasLink pipeline.

Natural gas producers in Western Canada, with their share of U.S. and Eastern Canadian markets threatened by competition from producers in the Marcellus/Utica and other shale plays south of the international border, for years have seen prospective LNG exports to Asian markets as a panacea. But efforts to develop liquefaction “trains” and export terminals in British Columbia failed to advance earlier this decade — for starters, their economics weren’t nearly as favorable as those for U.S. projects like Sabine Pass LNG. Then, by 2016-17, global markets were awash in LNG as new Australian and U.S. liquefaction trains came online, and the BC LNG projects still alive were either delayed further or scrapped. Now, with LNG demand on the upswing and the need for additional LNG capacity in the early-to-mid 2020s apparent, the co-developers of LNG Canada — Shell, PetroChina, Korea Gas and Mitsubishi — have attracted a new and significant investor: Petronas, Malaysia’s state-owned oil and gas company and owner of Progress Energy Canada, which has vast gas reserves in Western Canada. Today, we continue our review of efforts to send natural gas and crude oil to Asian markets with a fresh look at the LNG project and TransCanada’s planned Coastal GasLink pipeline, which will deliver gas to it.