Bronwyn Eyre is a former Saskatchewan Minister of Energy and Resources for four years. She has also held the portfolios of Justice & Attorney General, Education, Advanced Education, SaskPower, SaskEnergy, SaskWater and Status of Women. She resides in Saskatoon.
LNG carrier GasLog Glasgow was the very first ship to take on liquefied naturat gas from Kitimat. It departed on June 30, 2025. LNG Canada
Back in 2022, then-German Chancellor Olaf Scholz came to Canada seeking to buy Canadian liquified natural gas (LNG). Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida soon followed suit. Both, however, would leave empty-handed, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered them green hydrogen instead.
Now, Canadian LNG is back on the international table. The country’s first export terminal in Kitimat, B.C., Shell-run LNG Canada, is officially exporting to Asia—and its next-phase expansion plan is being fast-tracked as a federal major project.
In addition, Canada and Germany signed a supply agreement in May tied to the also-fast-tracked Ksi Lisims LNG project in northwestern B.C. According to letters of intent, Germany will import up to three million tonnes of LNG per year by the early 2030s.
But there’s a twist. Because Canada has no LNG export infrastructure on the east coast, the prized commodity will have to be shipped via the Panama Canal.
Such logistical madness underscores how fundamentally infrastructure-deficient Canada has become. Federal energy minister Tim Hodgson recently dodged the issue by suggesting that exporters could avoid the Panama Canal by doing financial swap contracts to fulfill international shipping commitments.
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That’s one approach. But of course, it fails to address the effect of Canada’s deep structural dysfunction—or that Canadian major projects are being increasingly government-subsidized. The Ksi Lisims project, for one, hasn’t managed to attract the billions necessary in private investment, raising the distinct possibility that the federal government will be the sole investor.
Meanwhile, some $40 billion in federal and provincial government funding has flowed to Shell’s LNG Canada—including $14.5 billion for its companion Coastal Gas Link pipeline, which has been plagued by coordinated violence, has cost double initial estimates, and has taken seven years to operationalize.
There are other issues as well. At least two lawsuits have been launched against the Nisga’a-backed Ksi Lisim by other Indigenous groups. The project currently lacks consent from almost half those impacted, including individual hereditary chiefs and Gitxaala First Nation leaders. They are also firmly opposed to the associated 750-kilometre natural gas pipeline.
Increasingly, our ‘Can’t-a-da’ reputation is preceding us. India recently complained that Canadian fuel supplies must become “unhindered” from regulatory hurdles and insufficient infrastructure. Corporate Canada agrees. CIBC president Harry Culham recently said that the lack of Canadian energy infrastructure over the last decade has produced “more headlines than pipelines.” National Bank of Canada’s Laurent Ferreira said Quebec must act quickly to tap its own considerable gas resources if it doesn’t want to continue to import more than half its supply from the U.S.
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It’s hard to unwind the past. Former Quebec Premier François Legault banned oil and gas development and revoked drilling licenses. Investment turned away, including Warren Buffett’s investment firm, Berkshire Hathaway, who once planned to invest $4B in the LNG export terminal in Saguenay.
Reading the new international room, new Quebec premier Christine Fréchette has cautiously mooted revoking Legault’s hydrocarbon ban, while Nova Scotia is lifting its moratorium on fracking and inviting gas producers to again submit drilling applications. Clearly, this is good news for future transatlantic exports to Europe.
However, like us, Europe has a lot of course-correcting to do. Eurozone countries are “adept at creating new crises to replace old ones,” Eric Reguly recently wrote in Report on Business. He pointed to the EU’s new methane regulations, which require oil and gas companies to disclose methane intensity based on still-to-be-published methodology or face severe fines. As a result, US suppliers are threatening to send their LNG elsewhere.
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Back in Canada—in response to environmentalists’ demands—the BC energy regulator recently announced that it would be ramping up roaming air monitors of LNG Canada, despite six methane measuring stations already in place. Industry leaders say the federal 75 per cent methane emission reduction is unreachable and amounts to an oil production cut by default.
On LNG, global perspective is everything. As a Fraser Institute report recently pointed out, Canadian natural gas exports could single-handedly de-accelerate India and China’s continued reliance on coal. Let’s also not forget that once President Trump unleashed LNG south of the border, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell substantially.
A decade ago, more than 20 planned LNG export projects were percolating in Canada. And now? Let’s just say that headlines over pipelines no longer cut it.
Bronwyn Eyre is a senior fellow with MEI and co-host of the Pipeline Online Podcast.
This column appeared in a modified form in the Western Standard.
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