Canada's BC LNG Alliance Goes National

Canada's BC LNG Alliance, created in 2014 to support British Columbia's nascent LNG industry, said June 15 it was adopting a national focus and renaming itself the Canadian LNG Alliance.

In a statement, the CLNGA said the move reflected “the critical role liquefied natural gas has to play in Canada’s Covid-19 economic recovery, economic reconciliation with indigenous communities and Canada’s clean energy transition.”

At the time the BCLNGA was created, Canada had no large-scale LNG industry, but as many as 20 projects had been proposed, most of them located on BC’s coast. Founding members of the group were Kitimat LNG (at the time a project of Chevron Canada and Apache Canada), LNG Canada, Pacific NorthWest LNG, Prince Rupert LNG, Triton LNG and Woodfibre LNG.

Since the crash of 2014, Pacific NorthWest LNG, Prince Rupert LNG and Triton LNG have fallen by the wayside, while Kitimat LNG’s future remains clouded following decisions by current sponsors Chevron and Australia’s Woodside Energy to divest all or a portion of their respective interests. Only LNG Canada – which reached a final investment decision in October 2018 and is being built near Kitimat, on BC’s northern coast – and the much smaller Woodfibre LNG project in Squamish, north of Vancouver are being actively developed.

Additional LNG projects – on Canada’s two seaboards – are still awaiting final investment decisions, the CLNGA said, and together they offer “tens of billions” of dollars of investment potential in Canada, thousands of jobs and new revenues for governments.

At the same time, the LNG industry is working to develop a new model of indigenous participation in Canada’s natural resources sector, building on earlier collaboration between LNG developers and First Nations to provide jobs, training and procurement opportunities.

“LNG is Canada’s opportunity,” CLNGA CEO Bryan Cox said. “By all of us working together – governments, industry, indigenous nations, workers, and communities – to responsibly build an LNG industry, we can provide a significant and much-needed economic boost to our country.”

And, he added, Canada’s low-emission LNG will make an “outsized contribution” to reducing global greenhouse gas and particulate emissions while investing in the transition to a cleaner energy future. Powered largely by clean hydro electricity, LNG produced in BC will produce among the world’s lowest-emissions intensity LNG.

CLNGA membership now comprises LNG Canada, Kitimat LNG, Woodside Energy, Woodfibre LNG, ExxonMobil, FortisBC, AltaGas and Enbridge.