FIRST READING: Just how far behind the world Canada has been allowed to lag on LNG
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Early on Sunday morning, word leaked out from the Pacific Coast port of Kitimat, B.C. that Canada had produced its first-ever liquid natural gas for export.
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Unnamed sources told Reuters that at 4 a.m. local time, the $40-billion LNG Canada terminal was first able to turn Canadian natural gas into a super-chilled liquid destined for Asian buyers. It's set to be loaded into the LNG tanker Gaslog Glasgow, a ship that as of press time was just entering Canadian territorial waters.
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Although the milestone is being feted as the beginning of a new multi-billion-dollar Canadian resource sector, it also neatly illustrates how far behind Canada has been allowed to lag in an industry where it could feasibly have been a dominant power.
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In all the world's other major producers of natural gas, this moment came years if not decades ago. The United States exported its first LNG in 2016, Qatar dispatched its first LNG vessels in 1997 and Australia was pioneering LNG export technology as early as 1989.
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All three are now raking in hundreds of billions in annual LNG money that could have been Canada's if it been able to reach the starting line earlier than Sunday morning.
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In Australia, the LNG export sector is now bringing in the Canadian equivalent of $220 million per day. According to the most recent figures from Australian Energy Producers, annual LNG export earnings were now worth $81.5 billion CDN.
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This kind of money added to the Canadian economy would represent a three per cent rise in overall GDP. Put another way, it would be akin to adding a Manitoba's worth of extra GDP to the economy (Manitoba's GDP was $91.9 billion in 2023).
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In the nine years since the United States' first LNG export, the country has turned into the world's largest single exporter of the fuel.
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The United States now has eight dedicated LNG export terminals, the most recent having opened in December.
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That same month, a report by S&P Global estimated that LNG exports had added a cumulative $400 billion ($550 billion CDN) to the U.S. economy.
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Canada could have feasibly been an early contender in the LNG trade for the simple reason that — just like the U.S., Qatar and Australia — the country has lots of natural gas as well as the technology to produce it.
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