Is Canada betting big on LNG at just the wrong time?

National Observer

16 hours ago

As the tanker GasLog Glasgow sailed out of Canada's new liquefied natural gas export terminal in Kitimat, BC in late June bound for Asia with the first cargo produced by the $40 billion project, Premier David Eby cheered the benefits it would bring to his province.
'Billions of dollars in economic growth and hundreds of jobs' would be created, he said, as operations geared up at LNG Canada's processing facility, built at a site 640 kilometres north of Vancouver by a group of petro-giants led by Shell Canada.
However, the project — Canada's first major LNG plant and the largest single private sector investment in the country's history — he said would also be a pioneering industrial model for developing resources and diversifying exports in the face of US tariff and annexation threats.
'First shipments of made-in-BC energy across the Pacific come at a pivotal time for our province and the country,' Eby said, with projects like Kitimat holding the potential to be the 'economic engine of a more independent Canada' as the country moves through its energy transition.
But Canada's first foray into the global LNG market 15 years after Ottawa issued lead-off export licences, along with plans for a further six projects, comes as the global industry enters a period of oversupply expected to put heavy downward pressure on prices.
Asia's shifting energy priorities are another factor weighing on the business case for investing billions of dollars in Canadian LNG facilities.
China, the world's largest LNG buyer, is ramping up renewables and relying on domestic coal to reduce its reliance on foreign sources of fossil fuels. Other countries balk at building expensive LNG facilities and worry about trade and supply chain disruptions, and more importantly, the price.
"Whether Canada will be able to capitalize on the promise of LNG is the question of the hour,' Clark Williams-Derry, an analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a US-based think tank, told Canada's National Observer.
After a 'lean period' of new supply from 2021 through 2024, the trajectory for the next five years 'looks like being on track for massive oversupply,' he said. The US is expected to add 97 million tonnes a year of new capacity, followed by Qatar with another 56 million tonnes.
Some LNG supply forecasts do not include dozens of LNG projects worldwide that have not yet received a final investment decision — the formal 'green light' for a project to begin construction, he said. But if approved, these projects will also compete with Canadian suppliers for market sales in the early-2030s.
'This is what Canada — which is only now coming to market with LNG Canada — is going to have to navigate: the biggest market upheaval we have ever seen,' Williams-Derry said.
'Demand for the taking'
François Poirier, CEO of oil and gas infrastructure giant TC Energy, summed up the gas industry's ambitions to take Canada from minnow to major status in Asia's 270-million-tonne LNG market.
Speaking to business leaders in April, he said that if the country has the political will, it could become 'the number one exporter of LNG to Asia' and help that region shed its reliance on coal-fired electricity generation.
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'We have the supply, we have a transportation cost advantage and the demand is there for the taking,' Poirier said, noting that Canada's Pacific coast LNG is closer to Asian markets than US gas shipped from ports on the Gulf of Mexico.
Canada's Energy and Natural Resources Minister, Tim Hodgson, insisted last week that Canadian LNG could wrest market share away from the US, the world's top LNG producer, which itself is adding new capacity. ' I know there are buyers,' he told CTV News, without naming countries.
Caroline Brouillette, executive Director of Climate Action Network Canada, rejected Hodgson's view that there is international appetite for LNG, despite the three major terminals soon to all be exporting out of BC (see panel below).
'With a global gas glut looming, this could not be further from the truth,' she said in a statement. Ottawa should shun fossil fuels and 'focus exclusively' on renewable energy, energy storage and electricity transmission projects 'based on inexpensive technologies that will make our country resilient in the long run.'
Nonetheless, some analysts are predicting a surge in Asian LNG demand by 2050.
Wood Mackenzie, an energy intelligence group, for one, forecasts a near doubling in demand to 510 million tonnes a year by 2050, as Asia's developing economies shift to cleaner alternatives to coal.
And Mathieu Utting, an analyst with Rystad Energy, another market research house, said Canada may be 'behind the curve in the near-term' in building LNG capacity — particularly as the US forges ahead with new export terminals in the Gulf of Mexico — but expects much of that American gas to be shipped to European markets.
'The most significant growth in global LNG demand to mid-century will come from Asia and in our view, this bodes very well for Canada,' he added.
Other analysts are much more pessimistic, seeing earlier hopes of an LNG bonanza for Canadian exports falling flat as a major gas glut looms on the horizon.
Fauziah Marzuki, global head of gas at BNEF, an energy market research firm, said LNG oversupply could hit the global market by the early-2030s as new large projects pegged to lofty pre-pandemic gas price forecasts start to come online.
'A lot of LNG projects got delayed by the 'pause' on export approvals in 2024 by the Biden administration,' she told Canada's National Observer. 'Some were delayed because big projects can get delayed, but either way it means there is a lot of LNG on the horizon that will soon be coming into production.'
LNG production 'tidal wave'
The 'flood' of LNG from new projects could collide later this decade with lower-than-expected demand from key buyers in Europe and Japan, Marzuki said.
The received market wisdom that suggested voracious LNG buyers China and India would 'step in to absorb surplus output' is unlikely to happen, she said, because gas prices are generally higher than for Asian coal — while renewable resources, such as wind and solar, are getting precipitously cheaper.
In China, energy security concerns are also weighing on the world's biggest LNG buyer. Beijing is ramping up renewable energy capacity and relying on domestic coal supplies to wean itself off foreign fossil fuels as it responds to a trade war with the US — undermining arguments here that Canadian gas can displace coal as Asian economies electrify.
The 'tidal wave' of global LNG production coming online through to the end of the decade could see current capacity expand 40 per cent by 2029, said Williams-Derry.
He points to a raft of LNG projects under construction in North America, Australia, Russia, Oman, UAE, Nigeria, Gabon, Malaysia, Indonesia, Republic of Congo and Argentina.
Together they would add 175 million tonnes a year of capacity as projects become operational sometime in this decade. The US will be home to nearly half of new LNG capacity by 2030, with another 25 per cent from Qatar.
'This raises key questions: who is going to absorb this flood of new supply coming to market?' he asked. 'What will happen to LNG prices? What might this mean for the finances of the sector – not least in Canada?'
What happens in Japan is important. The island nation almost single-handedly created Asia's LNG market with a surge in demand to generate electricity and offset the closure of nuclear power plants after the 2011 Fukushima earthquake.
Japan's LNG imports fell after 2014 as idled nuclear power plants restarted, and the country generated more power from renewable energy sources. The declining trend in Japan, and other countries such as South Korea, will continue, Williams-Derry said.
'Our expectation is that the demand from these countries will flatline or decline over the coming years.'
The softening of the Asian LNG market goes deeper than a downshift in demand from mature economies such as Japan and South Korea, Marzuki said.
The level of uncertainty over LNG deliveries to China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia — all have existing gas infrastructure but dwindling domestic supplies — is high because their energy policy strategies are 'highly price sensitive,' she said.
China, the world's number one LNG importer, could be counted on for steady year-on-year growth of around 7-12 million tonnes from 2015 to 2022, Williams-Derry said, but no longer.
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'Most in the industry thought that China's insatiable appetite for LNG would continue,' he said, but demand has dropped 22 per cent in the last year.
'Beijing prioritized domestic gas production, pipeline imports and, of course, a lot of wind and solar as LNG has become the most expensive form of gas in China's energy mix,' Williams-Derry said.
In India, the demand for LNG-fuelled power generation that propped up bullish Asian LNG market forecasts 'does not appear to be happening,' he said, putting existing Indian plants at risk of becoming stranded assets.
However Asian LNG demand plays out, Marzuki said, the harsh reality is that governments could balk at buying Canadian LNG in favour of cheaper deliveries from other suppliers — or rely on low-cost domestic coal to generate electricity.
'The US, Qatar, Australia, other countries, will all be competing with Canada for these markets,' she said. 'This is where the big growth was supposed to come from.'
'Timing for Canada is a problem'
The price competition will be cut-throat for Canadian LNG producers, analysts said.
Emerging and developing economies that import gas would need prices at $3-5 per million British thermal units (BTU), the standard unit for measuring the heating content of fuels, to make LNG 'attractive as a large-scale alternative to renewables and coal,' the International Energy Agency said.
The IEA noted export projects currently in the global pipeline need around twice that price.
LNG coming out of Canada currently breaks even at $7.20-$8.70 per million BTUs, the Canadian Energy Centre, an Alberta-based pro-fossil fuel think tank, said in a recent report.
But others, including Williams-Derry, see these price predictions as overly optimistic, given that the global power sector 'will always be on the look-out for other, cheaper sources of fuel than LNG.'
Canadian LNG leaving from Pacific ports takes around 10 days to reach Asia — a clear advantage over US exports from the Gulf of Mexico that must travel via the Panama Canal or around the southern tip of South America, a journey that can be twice as long.
But Canada's window of opportunity to grab a major slice of Asia's LNG market with this 'quick delivery' time is closing fast, if not already shuttered, Marzuki said.
'Timing is a problem for Canada,' she said, noting the LNG Canada project at Kitimat took years to reach the market after getting the green light in 2012.
'Even if you take the decision to build more LNG terminals today in BC, you still need supply to those terminals, as well as at least five years to construct them,' she said.