C$55 billion BC LNG venture by Indigenous community, producers

Gary Park

for Petroleum News

A British Columbia Indigenous community and the province’s natural gas industry have launched plans for a massive LNG venture carrying the largest price tag of any industrial project in Canadian history and shrugging off uncertainty surrounding the global LNG outlook.

The Nisga’a Nation and a partnership of seven producing companies have teamed up to seek regulatory approval for their Ksi Lisims LNG project, which is estimated to cost C$55 billion - C$15 billion more than the Shell-led LNG Canada consortium which hopes to come onstream in 2025 - including a terminal and liquefaction plant, a pipeline from B.C. gas fields and the production of gas.

The Ksi Lisims proponents have made a pledge to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions within three years of starting 30 years of commercial operations in 2027 by employing hydroelectricity, energy efficiency, carbon offsets and potential carbon capture and storage.

The project will rely heavily on an electric-motor technology in refrigerant compressors, using electricity from government-owned BC Hydro for the liquefaction process instead of LNG’s reliance on natural gas-powered turbines.

A floating liquefaction facility is planned for the village of Gingolx, a coastal community 50 miles north of Prince Rupert.

The project, which would generate 4,000 constructions jobs, is designed to achieve initial peak exports of 12 million metric tons a year of LNG, compared with 14 million mt by LNG Canada and 2.1 million mt from the Woodfibre LNG project at Squamish, just north of Vancouver.

One other LNG proposal is considered by industry analysts to remain viable - the Cedar LNG partnership in Kitimat between Pembina Pipeline and the Haisla Nation.

A 135-page document filed earlier in July with the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office said the Nisga’a Treaty signed in 2000 with the governments of Canada and B.C. gave the Nisga’a control over about 780 square miles of territory in northwest B.C.

“Attracting an economic base to our treaty lands … has long been a priority for the Nisga’a Nation,” said community president Eva Clayton in an announcement.

“This is why, for close to a decade, our nation has worked to attract a world-leading LNG project … and why we are proud to commence the formal regulatory process.”

Calgary-based Birchcliff Energy is leading the gas producers known as Rockies LNG, which hired Houston-based Western LNG to help guide the plans.

FID in 2024

In its regulatory filing Ksi Lisims said it aims to revive one of two now-defunct pipeline plans - one by TC Energy and one by Enbridge - that accompanied other failed LNG proposals to ship gas from B.C.’s northeastern fields to liquefaction facilities.

They include TC Energy’s Prince Rupert Gas Transmission proposal, which got shelved in 2017 after Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas scuttled another mega-LNG proposal.

In the meantime, TC Energy has continued work on its Coastal GasLink pipeline to support LNG Canada’s terminal site, despite resistance from a group of Wet’suwet’en Nation hereditary chiefs, who organized road and rail blockades in early 2020 to shut down construction of the pipeline.

TC Energy and Enbridge say they have prepared routes that would not have to cross the Wet’suwet’en land.

The Ksi Lisims document says their undertaking will contribute to economic reconciliation between First Nations and the governing provincial and federal governments by “implementing the Nisga’a Nation’s authority over economic development on lands they own.”

The regulatory application said natural gas makes sense as a transition fuel to help displace coal-fired electricity generation plants in Asia.

“Exporting LNG from Canada adds natural gas supply to the global gas market, enabling governments to phased out coal use and to supply growing energy demand,” the filing said.

- GARY PARK