What’s all this about LNG? Liquid Gas? That hardly makes any sense!
LNG stands for Liquified Natural Gas. Natural gas, coined as ‘natural’ in 1821 to distinguish it from gas made from whale oil or coal, is another name for methane. While methane does occur naturally in the earth, ‘natural’ doesn’t mean what gas companies would want you to believe. The word ‘natural’ carries associations of something clean, non-toxic or wholesome, such as natural cleaning products. The gas industry is happily riding the coat tails of this.
Methane is far from non-toxic and wholesome. The process of producing LNG is highly destructive. Huge amounts of (drinking) water and chemicals are injected into wells in Alberta and British Columbia to extract methane. This gas is pumped hundreds of kilometres through high-pressure pipelines to the coast. Here, it is supercooled to -162℃, pumped into ships and sailed across the Pacific Ocean to its final destination, whereupon it warms back up and enters the system as a regular gas. Easy!
- LNG creates toxic pollution
You might have noticed from the above description that there are many steps involved in getting gas from its origin point to its destination. At every stage, the odorless and colourless methane gas can leak out into the atmosphere. Methane is eighty times more polluting than carbon dioxide on a twenty-year timescale. All of the leaky pipes, wells, holes, and equipment used to move gas across Canada are responsible for about 8 per cent of Canada’s total emissions.
This leaky methane speeds up climate change. It also poses direct health risks to people. Methane emissions have been linked to cardiovascular disease and over half a million premature deaths and asthma-related emergency room visits per year.
- Canadian LNG is owned by foreign companies
The whole point of a “Nation Building” project is to build Canada up. Unfortunately, the vast majority of companies involved in LNG are foreign-owned. Canada’s flagship project, LNG Canada, is jointly owned by Shell (British), Petronas (Malaysian), PetroChine (Chinese), Mitsubishi (Japanese) and KOGAS (Korean).
Woodfibre LNG is jointly owned by Enbridge (30 per cent) and Pacific Energy Corp (70 per cent). PEC is led by the Indonesian Billionaire Sukanto Tanoto, who has been linked to secretly wiping out Orangutan and Sumatran Tiger habitats in Borneo. While the most recently proposed project Ksi Lisims is partially owned by the Nisga’a Nation, it’s also owned by Houston-based shell company Western LNG, and a conglomerate of Canadian and foreign-owned oil and gas companies.
As well as project owners largely being foreign, lots of physical LNG infrastructure is to be constructed in South Korea and floated across the Pacific Ocean, offshoring jobs. So much for nation-building!
- The world already has too much gas
Headlines might suggest every country in the world is desperate for Canadian LNG. The reality tells a different story. Around 300 billion cubic meters per year (bcm/yr) of new LNG export capacity is set to come online by 2030. In contrast, demand is set to grow by less than this, leaving 65 bcm excess supply. This is the classic economic example: supply outstrips demand.
- Some projects don’t have Indigenous consent
Cedar LNG and Woodfibre LNG both involve close relationships with First Nation partners. As mentioned, Ksi Lisims is also jointly owned by a First Nation. However, multiple First Nations impacted by the project have explicitly not given their consent, citing environmental and cultural concerns. Even First Nations which did provide their consent voices serious concerns about the cumulative impacts of the project.
Indigenous opposition around the Coastal Gaslink Pipeline, which fuels LNG Canada, was well documented at the time. After the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Leadership did not consent to the project, they exercised peaceful protection of their territory against private companies.
- LNG needs taxpayer money
LNG is expensive. The Coastal Gaslink Pipeline, which was constructed to get gas to LNG Canada, cost a whopping $14.5 billion. The costs for Woodfibre LNG have ballooned from $5 billion to over $8 billion. Ksi Lisims is set to cost $10 billion. Investors don’t feel confident enough about financing these projects due to the uncertainty of returns and the energy transition. As a result, both the BC and Federal governments are providing taxpayer-funded subsidies to get the projects moving. The federal government has provided $1.7 billion in taxpayer money so far for LNG.
So in summary? The federal government is passing taxpayer money over to foreign companies to sell a toxic product into an oversold market, all while disrupting the process of reconciliation in Canada. That’s what they are calling Nation Building? Nope, more like Nation-betraying.
Real nation-building means creating a strong, independent, and future-ready Canada by investing public dollars in industries that will sustain us for generations, not in costly, subsidy-dependent projects like LNG that rely on foreign companies and face uncertain demand in a changing global market. It’s about building an economy rooted in clean energy, resilient infrastructure, and good jobs across communities, so our prosperity, security, and sovereignty are truly in our own hands.
