Pacific Northwest LNG Terminal
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Pacific Northwest LNG Terminal was a proposed LNG terminal in British Columbia, Canada. It was cancelled in 2017.
Contents
Location
Project Details
- Owner: PNW LNG
- Parent: Petronas, Sinopec, Japan Petroleum Exploration (Japex), China Huadian, Indian Oil, Brunei National Petroleum
- Location: Lelu Island, Port Edward, British Columbia, Canada
- Coordinates: 54.2, -130.289 (approximate)
- Capacity: 21 mtpa, 3.01 bcfd
- Status: Cancelled (called off in July 2017)
- Type: Export
- Trains: 2[1]
- Start Year:
Note: mtpa = million tonnes per year; bcfd = billion cubic feet per day
Background
Pacific Northwest LNG Terminal was a proposed LNG terminal in British Columbia, Canada.[2]
Six major global oil companies backed the Pacific NorthWest LNG project. Malaysian oil company Petronas owned the majority stake. Petronas promised a $36 billion investment in the Pacific Northwest LNG project.[3] The minority stakeholders in the project included Japanese oil and gas company JAPEX; Chinese oil and chemical company Sinopec; China Huadian Corporation, one of China’s largest state-owned power producers; Indian Oil, India’s largest corporation and owner of half of the country’s oil refineries; and Petroleum Brunei, the national oil company of Brunei. Each of the minority stakeholders had pledged to buy LNG from the facility, but the project still lacks buyers for all of the planned 18 million metric tons of LNG it would produce annually.
Sited at Lelu Island, south of Port Edward, BC, Pacific NorthWest LNG would have been supplied gas by the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Project, a proposed 900-kilometer pipeline.
After the Canadian federal government approved the project in September 2016, the backers delayed the final investment decision until summer 2017. Though the Nisga’a Lisims government signed economic benefits agreements with both the pipeline backer and the province, a coalition of indigenous leaders, politicians, scientists, fishermen, and others has signed a declaration to protect Lelu Island and the Skeena River, BC’s second-largest salmon-bearing waterway, from industrial development such as the Pacific NorthWest LNG facility.[4]
Malaysia's Petronas announced it delayed its final decision on Pacific Northwest LNG despite speculation the project’s backers would decide spring 2017.[5]
In July 2017 Petronas and its partners said they were abandoning the project, citing in a press release "prolonged depressed [gas] prices and shifts in the energy industry".[6]
Opposition
New Democratic Party (NDP) leader John Horgan came out against the Pacific Northwest LNG in early 2016. The Green Party oppose LNG development in general.[5]
Pacific Northwest LNG has been controversial on an environmental front because of its proposed location on Lelu Island, in the District of Port Edward, near Prince Rupert.
Many in the First Nations community fear the LNG will destroy salmon nursing grounds, the foundation of traditional fishing, and aquaculture harvesting. The island sits neighbors a sandbar where tall eelgrass grows that protects juvenile salmon as they adjust from the fresh Skeena River water to the salty Pacific.[7]
The Gitwilgyoots Tribe launched their court challenge October 2016 to have the federal government’s approval of the LNG facility overturned.[7]
In January 2017 the Lax Kw’alaams Band signed an impact benefit agreement worth approximately $1 billion over 40 years.[7] The band said in 2015 that it would receive an initial payment of $28 million.The tribe asked the federal government establishes an environmental committee with First Nations members.[4]
In exchange the Lax Kw’alaams Band would support the LNG project. According to documents filed in federal court by the Gitwilgyoots Tribe on May 2017 the band council suppressed scientific research it had commissioned when the research report did not support the band’s position on the project. Members of the Gitwilgyoots Tribe also argue the band has no authority to approve the project.[7]
Articles and resources
References
- ↑ Pacific Northwest LNG Terminal , A Barrel Full, accessed April 2017
- ↑ Pacific Northwest LNG Terminal , A Barrel Full, accessed April 2017
- ↑ Shawn McCarthy, "Lax Kw’alaam Band gives green light to Pacific NorthWest – with conditions," The Globe and Mail, Mar. 18, 2016.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Mapping BC's LNG Proposals: Twenty projects stall as provincial government’s liquefied natural gas ‘gold rush’ busts," Sightline Institute, March 2017 (contains further footnotes in text)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Clark Williams-Derry, "Why Has BC’S LNG Industry Stalled?," Sightline, June 28, 2017.
- ↑ Natalie Obiko Pearson, "Petronas cancels Canada LNG project, citing 'prolonged depressed prices,'" The Age, July 26, 2017
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Trevor Jang, "Suppressed Science Report Questioned Location of Pacific Northwest LNG Plant," Discourse Media, June 8, 2017.
