Oh, Did Everyone Just Change Their Minds on Canadian LNG?

I guess bar tabs DON'T pay for themselves:

With an estimated price tag of US$44 billion, Alaska LNG would see a 1,300-kilometre pipeline traverse the state from north to south, passing through treacherous terrain to deliver an average of 3.5 million mmBTU a day of gas to a liquefaction plant in Nikiski, south of Anchorage. The project also includes a carbon capture plant by the gas fields on Alaska’s North Slope.

Some of the gas would be for Alaskans’ needs, but most would be loaded onto tankers and sold across the Pacific, the same markets Canadian LNG developers want to tap.

“It would be beneficial to Canada to not have Alaska LNG be built,” said Mills.

But if it did go ahead — and that’s a big if — it would be after 2030, she added.

Late last month, the state corporation behind the massive endeavour, Alaska Gasline Development Corp., signed Glenfarne Group as lead developer on the project. Glenfarne, a U.S. builder of energy infrastructure, now owns 75 per cent of the project, AGDC holding the rest.

A final investment decision on Alaska LNG is expected some time this year.

Kent Fellows, an economist with the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, said contracts to buy LNG are signed before plants start up and usually span several years.

So the trade chaos Trump has unleashed with a bevy of tariffs against one-time allies does the Alaska project no favours.

“It can be really costly to make some of these investments if you're not sure that trade relationship is going to be stable going forward,” Fellows said.

“One of the huge advantages that the United States had up until about 12 months ago (is) they had a reputation for being a very stable economy, being an economy that believed in global free trade.”

If Alaska LNG is somehow successful in sewing up contracts with Asian buyers, it makes it harder for B.C. projects further behind in development to secure enough demand to justify their own plants.

"With an LNG market, that competition happens at the time the facility is built, so timing the market can end up really, really important," said Fellows.

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German companies are looking to buy and swap Canadian LNG cargoes shipped off the Pacific coast to help meet European demand, Canada's Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson said on Wednesday.

Canada, the world's fifth-largest natural gas producer, shipped its first-ever liquefied natural gas export cargo in June from the recently constructed LNG Canada facility in British Columbia, which is led by Shell and is the first North American LNG export site with direct access to the Pacific Ocean. 

The bulk of LNG Canada's exports is expected to ship to Asia, but Hodgson told reporters the cargoes are also drawing interest from European buyers pursuing swap opportunities.

 

I was assured that there is no business case for liquid natural gas.