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No stopping LNG Canada
Consortium boss says Shell has spent C$3 billion lining up contracts in China
Gary Park for Petroleum News
The LNG Canada consortium is turning words into action, a month after its Chief Executive Officer Andy Caliz declared there “is not a single scenario” that would cause construction of a related pipeline to be stopped.
Work is also proceeding on an C$18 billion LNG export facility at Kitimat on the northern British Columbia coast, a key element of the C$40 billion project, despite a continuing legal spat with the Wet’suwet’en Nation.
Caliz told an international conference in Toronto that the lead partner, Royal Dutch Shell, has already invested C$3 billion to secure contracts in China where modules for the liquefaction plant will be fabricated.
But eight hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en are adamant they will continue their efforts to blockade TransCanada’s Coastal GasLink pipeline, spurred on by word on April 16 from federal government and Coastal GasLink lawyers that criminal contempt charges have been dropped against 14 people who were arrested at a protest site in January.
Five clans, hereditary leaders The Wet’suwet’en is made up of five clans and all five hereditary leaders who claim their control of lands outside the territory controlled by elected councils extends back thousands of years.
Hereditary Chief Na’moks (also known as John Risdale) said the Canadian government, despite its pledge to build a new relationship with indigenous people, sent in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in January, making arrests with officers wielding rifles.
“Reconciliation (will not be achieved) at the barrel of a gun,” he said. “The federal government is not following the rule of law, it’s following the rule of corporate law.”
Caliz said LNG Canada has the support of 20 First Nations in the Kitimat area and along the pipeline route and has already spent C$175 million on contracts with indigenous-led businesses.
NEB hearing set However, in addition to legal challenges from the Wet’suwet’en, LNG Canada faces a regulatory test when the National Energy Board hears two days of oral arguments that it should have overseen the environmental assessment of the pipeline rather than British Columbia’s Oil and Gas Commission.
Along with LNG Canada, the Kitimat LNG proposal by Chevron and Australia’s Woodside Energy is back in full swing, having applied to the NEB for a new license to double capacity at its proposed Kitimat plant, although the partners have yet to set a deadline for a final investment decision.
Jackie Forrest, with Calgary-based ARC Energy Research Institute, told the Toronto conference that Canada is positioned to become a global LNG power.
She said LNG from Canada is “cheaper than supplies from the U.S. ... and Australia. If Canada could get more regulatory certainty, there would be a greater opportunity for LNG.”
That outlook is endorsed by Alberta’s newly elected Premier Jason Kenney, who, despite feuding over the Trans Mountain bitumen pipeline, has already reached out to British Columbia Premier John Horgan in hopes of finding an LNG outlet for stranded Alberta natural gas.
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