LNG Canada achieves first production of liquefied natural gas in Kitimat, B.C.
LNG Canada has started producing liquefied natural gas for export at its facility in Kitimat, B.C., about 650 kilometres northwest of Vancouver.
A spokesperson confirmed Sunday the company has "safely achieved its first production" of LNG.
The West Coast plant will receive natural gas, transported via the Coastal GasLink pipeline from near Dawson Creek in the province's northeast, cool it, and ship it to Asian markets.
The facility is the first large-scale Canadian LNG project to begin production and also the first major LNG facility in North America with direct access to the Pacific coast, significantly reducing sail time to Asian markets when compared to U.S. Gulf Coast facilities.
It is expected to export 14 million tonnes of LNG a year, creating close to 300 ongoing jobs at an estimated value of $575 million annually for 40 years, according to the B.C. government. A proposed Phase 2 would increase the export amount to 28 million tonnes annually.
Costing $40 billion, the Canadian government has said the project is the " largest single private sector investment in the history of the country," with backing from Shell, Petronas, PetroChina, Mitsubishi Corporation and the Korea Gas Corp.
Kitimat Mayor Phil Germouth said LNG Canada is an example other major infrastructure builders should follow.
"They clearly set a gold standard when it comes to getting communities on side, getting First Nations on side," Germouth told CBC's chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton.
"They've done a fantastic job of that."
LNG Canada says it is on track to load first cargoes by the middle of 2025.
What is LNG?
LNG is made from natural gas, a fossil fuel often extracted from northeast B.C. and Alberta through a practice called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
It involves drilling down into the ground and injecting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the ground to force the release of the oil and gas.
The gas is then shipped via pipeline to terminals, which cool it to about –160 C, at which point it can be shipped overseas for use as a fuel.
LNG is often referred to as "clean" because burning it for fuel causes fewer emissions than coal or oil, but that claim is disputed by some analysts because of the energy and destruction it takes to produce.
One of the known impacts of fracking is an increase in earthquakes, which have been felt with increasing frequency in B.C.'s Peace River region in recent years.
Two other smaller LNG export facilities are also under construction in B.C.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBC
43 minutes ago
- CBC
As 1st office-to-hotel conversion opens in downtown Calgary, what's next for revival bid?
Social Sharing On Thursday, a former office tower in Calgary's downtown reopened as the Element Calgary Downtown hotel, marking the city's first completed office-to-hotel conversion under its downtown office conversion program. For officials who have spent years plotting the program, it's not just about the hotel, which sports 226 rooms, along with a rooftop bar. More than that, officials say it represents an important step on a long journey to diversify the downtown, providing more things for people to do in the core than just go to work. "For us, it's pretty exciting," said Thom Mahler, the director of the city's downtown strategy, in an interview. "If you remember going back to 2014, 2015, a lot of stuff we talked about then at that time was how our downtown was heavily reliant on one industry, very focused on head office and office space." It's a notable moment in the ongoing plan to reinvent Calgary's hollowed-out downtown core. But there's still a long road ahead, as many approved projects remain unfinished and vacancy rates remain high. Still, for Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek, it's the sort of project she feels the city should have acted quickly on when the energy sector was in dire straights 10 years ago. "It took us a lot of time, because we had so many cynics who said, you can't do anything but office downtown. And to those cynics, I say, you were wrong," Gondek said. "We proved out that you can do things differently." Open for business (and residential and hospitality) Calgary's downtown problem did start in earnest in 2015, after the price of oil crashed. At that time, an office-leasing principal at Avison Young told Bloomberg News it was a "bloodbath." The COVID-19 pandemic five years later only made things worse. Today, while the bleeding may have been slowed, recovery remains a work in progress. Industry figures vary, but as of the first quarter of 2025, about 30.2 per cent of Calgary's downtown office space was vacant, down from a peak of 33.8 per cent in the second quarter of 2022, according to the real estate firm CBRE Canada. Meanwhile, overall Class AA real estate — sometimes referred to as "trophy buildings" — was around 17 per cent vacant. But whether that overall number sits at 33 per cent or 28 per cent or anywhere in between, it still represents a big chunk of vacant office space in the downtown core, said Greg Kwong, CBRE's executive chair for Alberta. "The average person goes, 'Oh, that's too bad.' But they don't understand that a lot of the tax revenue the city needs from property taxes in the downtown core just isn't available right now. That's a concern," Kwong said. "At the same time, it's also indicative of the work-from-home issue that every country, quite frankly, and every city are dealing with." 'Baby steps' From Kwong's vantage point, the whole city is hoping this program will help with its vacancy problem. But up to this point, it's been "baby steps." "Of the buildings that originally got approved for this grant, only a handful have been completed," he said. "So, it's still early stages … it's slower than everyone's anticipated, but through no fault of anyone. It's COVID, and the rise in construction costs." So far, of 11 original approved projects, three have been completed: the Element Hotel, and two office towers converted into residential buildings, The Cornerstone and the HAT at Eau Claire. Five more are expected to open later this year. There were also 10 projects recently announced by the city with locations yet to be announced, supported by the federal Housing Accelerator Fund. There are also separate incentives available for office demolition projects and for post-secondary institutions. In April, it was announced that the University of Calgary's campus would expand into a space on Seventh Avenue S.W. in what was formerly known as the Nexen Building. The demolition incentive has also seen one project approved. WATCH | University of Calgary School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape moving into the former Nexen Building: Can filling this office building revive Calgary's downtown? 2 months ago Duration 10:59 The University of Calgary is moving its School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape into the former Nexen Building, an office tower that has sat virtually empty for about six years. Many believe the project has all the elements the city needs to cement its downtown revitalization efforts. The CBC's Helen Pike looks into how a project that will bring 1,200 students downtown will or won't move the needle. As it set out in its plan, Calgary aimed to remove six million square feet of office space from the downtown by 2031. Mahler said that target is still the goal. That figure was chosen based on a model that suggested doing so would stabilize property values and see the remaining office buildings go back up in value. "We're almost halfway there. But on a regular basis, we're talking to other investors who are coming into the Calgary market, some from external, some are just existing developers," he said. "We're looking at the buildings that are left, and [asking], what can we do with them?" Challenges remain At the same time, Mahler acknowledged that challenges remain, particularly around health and safety concerns in the core. He said the city is committed to creating a more active and livable downtown that draws people in not just during weekday office hours, but during evenings and weekends too. "If you hadn't come down for 15 years, you'd see a very different downtown. You see a downtown that's much more lively in the evenings and on weekends, which is what we are starting to see," he said. Still, there's "no one panacea" that can solve this issue, according to Kwong with CBRE. "I think the city and the business community, everybody has to be pulling on the levers," he said. And he added that it's still going to take considerable time before it's possible to get the vacancy down to a more reasonable 10 to 12 per cent rate. "I really don't see it coming down from 30 per cent to 10 per cent in the next five years, for sure. But I see a trend of vacancy rates dropping," he said.
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
TransLink says fare enforcement blitz has led to millions in cost savings
Social Sharing Metro Vancouver's transit authority is hailing a recent increase in fare enforcement as a cost-saver, with TransLink saying it generated $3.2 million of additional revenue over six months. Cash-strapped TransLink says the increase in fare enforcement came about as part of $90 million in cost-saving measures announced last year. In the second half of 2024, the transit authority said it massively increased fare enforcement checks, and there was a bump in the number of people buying regular fares, as opposed to concession fares, like those offered to seniors and youth. TransLink says the revenue bump amounted to around $500,000 per month, and they're on track to exceed the cost savings that they had accounted for with the fare enforcement blitz. "We've seen the purchase of about 50,000 more adult fare passes each month and a decrease of 50,000 concession passes each month," said Anita Bathe, a TransLink spokesperson. "And that change alone really puts us on track to exceed the revenue target that we had — $5 million annually. So if this continues, we could see it being about $6 million." Bathe said that the authority was seeing most of its fare evasion on buses, particularly larger buses where commuters can enter through any door. TransLink said in a statement that the fare enforcement increase is to educate customers on correct fare payments and reduce lost revenue from fare evasion. The authority has been warning of cutting bus routes and service reductions amid funding challenges for years, with a recently-announced funding plan ensuring no service cuts until at least 2027. Call for lower-income fare pass A transit advocate, however, says the easiest way to reduce fare evasion would be to get a lower-income fare program in place. "There are legitimately a lot of people who can't afford to get by in Metro Vancouver, [for whom] their only option is to pay a full fare or break the law," said Denis Agar, the executive director of transit advocacy organization Movement. "In cities like Calgary, Toronto, Los Angeles, Seattle, there is a discount for people who can't afford fares, and we don't have that here, so we need that part." Agar also noted his concerns if police start enforcing fare evasion, saying having weapon-carrying officers on the transit system would send the wrong message. Bathe said that TransLink was not looking to target people who couldn't pay, and that the fare evasion program was being enforced by transit security officers and not police. She added that eight security officers had been hired in recent months by the authority as part of its fare enforcement program. The spokesperson added that while TransLink doesn't have the operating funds to offer a low-income fare program of its own, it has been advocating for higher levels of government to step up and do so. Currently, TransLink only offers discounted and free fares to seniors, youth between the ages of 13 and 18, people with disabilities, university students, and certain non-profits serving low-income people. "We always want to see what we can do to make sure that those vulnerable people are able to still use our system, because oftentimes those people are some of the ones who need it the most," Bathe said.
Globe and Mail
an hour ago
- Globe and Mail
Federal Liberals reintroduce cybersecurity bill meant to protect critical infrastructure
Ottawa has reintroduced legislation aimed at protecting Canada's critical infrastructure that cybersecurity experts have called long overdue. The federal government first introduced legislation in 2022 that required critical industries such as telecommunications, banking, transportation and energy to have cybersecurity programs in place and to report incidents. Bill C-26 also would have amended the Telecommunications Act to make the federal government's previously announced ban on equipment from Chinese-owned suppliers Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and ZTE Corp. enforceable. After facing delays, the cybersecurity and telecom legislation died earlier this year, when then-prime-minister Justin Trudeau prorogued Parliament. Last week, the new Liberal government revived it in the form of Bill C-8. The new bill, which is nearly identical to the previous one, was introduced shortly before the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation publicly cautioned that a group of Chinese hackers known as Salt Typhoon appear to have compromised a Canadian telecom. In a cyber threat bulletin issued last Thursday, the cyber centre and the FBI warned that threat actors 'almost certainly' sponsored by the People's Republic of China, specifically the group known as Salt Typhoon, are currently targeting Canadian telecoms. The bulletin also noted that three network devices registered to a Canadian telecom were compromised, most likely by Salt Typhoon, in mid-February. Opinion: Here's how we can improve cybersecurity for Canadians and businesses David Shipley, the chief executive officer of cybersecurity software firm Beauceron Security Inc., said Bill C-26 had broad support across political parties and had been on the cusp of adoption before being sidelined by a typo. 'It was almost like comedy of errors that it didn't make it across the line,' said Mr. Shipley. He added, 'we better get moving, because we are way behind the eight ball on this one.' Robbie Grant, a privacy and data protection lawyer with McMillan LLP, said Bill C-8 is 'almost verbatim' a copy of Bill C-26, with only a few inconsequential changes likely made to improve the efficiency of the legislation. 'It's the same bill back from the dead,' he said. Given that Liberals are once again in power, he said, Ottawa could use internal processes to speed the bill through approval stages and pass it faster than usual. Imran Ahmad, co-head of cybersecurity and data privacy at Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP, said the government introduced the bill in a limited parliamentary session just before the summer break, which suggests that the issue is a priority for the Liberals. 'The fact that it's almost identical in terms of language means the government is likely hoping this can be quickly passed,' Mr. Ahmad said. Once it is given royal assent, Bill C-8 will ensure that Canadian companies in several essential industries are adequately protecting their operations and data against cybersecurity threats, said Mr. Grant. Industry experts have criticized the government for being slow to pass the legislation, given the rise in cyberattacks in recent years. Hacking during the early days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in particular, drew attention to the need for additional measures, according to Mr. Grant. 'This bill recognizes another theatre of war. There was air, land and sea, and now there's cyber,' he said. 'It's a matter of national security to protect our critical infrastructure.' Under the bill, telecom companies would become subject to more supervision by the government. The legislation empowers the Governor in Council – essentially cabinet – and the Industry Minister to order telecom companies 'to do anything or refrain from doing anything,' Mr. Grant said. One key measure in the bill would empower Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada to require telecoms to remove equipment by certain Chinese manufacturers from their networks, with penalties of $10-million should they fail to do so. In 2022, the department first told telecom companies that they would be required to remove equipment made by Huawei and ZTE, which is partially owned by the Chinese government. However, the minister has no power to enforce the order until legislation is passed. According to data from ISED, as of Dec. 13, 2024, only Telus Corp. T-T was using Huawei equipment in its 5G network. Bell Canada BCE-T and Telus both still used Huawei equipment in their 4G networks. Earlier this year, Telus said the radios operating on its 5G network are 4G radios that have been given a software upgrade. Under the original directive, the equipment on 4G radios was not expected to be removed until Dec. 31, 2027, unlike 5G radios, which would have been required to replace the equipment by June, 2024, should the first bill have passed.
