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Climbing aboard the LNG wagon TransCanada, Petro-Canada joint venture combines skills to answer expected surge in North America’s natural gas appetite Gary Park Petroleum News Calgary Correspondent
TransCanada and Petro-Canada have turned the battle to build liquefied natural gas terminals in Canada into a heavyweight contest.
The two energy giants have launched a joint effort to build a C$660 million facility in eastern Quebec in response to what TransCanada believes will be a 20 percent increase in North America’s gas demand from 2002 to 2012.
Having been spurned in its efforts to establish an LNG terminal in Maine, TransCanada has decided to seek friendlier confines on the Canadian side of the border.
If the Cacouna Energy project achieves its in-service date of 2009, it will handle 500 million cubic feet per day of imported LNG and could supply Ontario, Quebec, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
The terminal near Riviere-du-Loup would also have two storage tanks with total capacity of 6.8 billion cubic feet.
Petro-Canada, which has increasingly talked about the potential of LNG, believes it can deliver the upstream supply and marketing capability, while TransCanada will oversee construction and operation of any new pipelines.
Earlier this year, TransCanada and ConocoPhillips scrapped plans for an LNG facility in Maine after residents in the village of Harpswell voted against the proposed site, while a proposal for Cumberland, Maine, was also dropped. Applications expected by mid-2005 Applications are expected to be filed with federal, provincial and local authorities by mid-2005 and construction will start in 2007 if regulatory approvals are received.
The unveiling of the Cacouna plan on Sept. 1 is the eighth LNG proposal for Canada.
It pits TransCanada against its pipeline rival Enbridge in Quebec, where Enbridge, Gaz Metropolitain and Gaz de France have teamed up with plans for a C$700 million facility near Quebec City that is also targeting a 2009 start-up, handling daily volumes of 500 million cubic feet.
In Atlantic Canada, four projects have been floated, two of them at an advanced regulatory stage.
Privately held Irving Oil is moving ahead with its C$700 million plan for a New Brunswick terminal, to handle 1 billion cubic feet per day, while Anadarko bought a C$500 million, 1 bcf per day plan for a plant in Nova Scotia after paying an undisclosed sum to acquire privately owned Access Northeast Energy. Both are supposed to be on stream in 2007.
Meanwhile, Keltic Petrochemicals, a little-known, Halifax-based company, is shooting for a C$4 billion petrochemical and LNG facility in Goldboro, Nova Scotia.
It filed with federal regulators late last month to start work in 2005 on an LNG terminal to supply a petrochemical plant to produce raw plastic.
In addition, Statia Terminals has said it is considering spending “hundreds of millions of dollars” to build a complex in Nova Scotia and capitalizing on its existing petroleum storage business.
In British Columbia, two ventures each carrying a price tag of C$300 million have been floated for deepwater ports — WestPac Terminals and Moneta Capital Partners near Prince Rupert and Galveston at Kitimat. Both are targeting start-ups late this decade.
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