Canada just missed possibly one of the greatest opportunities in its history
2022. 8. 25. 02:48ㆍ■ 국제/CANADA
Canada just missed possibly one of the greatest opportunities in its history (msn.com)
Canada just missed possibly one of the greatest opportunities in its history
The economic hit is overwhelming: At current prices, even just one Canadian port exporting liquid natural gas could be adding nine figures to the Canadian GDP each day.
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Canada just missed possibly one of the greatest opportunities in its history
Tristin Hopper
It could well represent one of the biggest missed opportunities in Canadian history: An embattled Europe is clamouring for natural gas, and one of the world’s biggest producers of the stuff can’t sell it to them.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz at an event in Toronto on Tuesday. Scholz's attempts to secure Canadian LNG have mostly fallen on deaf ears in Ottawa.© Provided by National Post
The economic hit is overwhelming: At current prices, even just one Canadian port exporting liquid natural gas could be adding nine figures to the Canadian GDP each day. Politically, Canada could be helping to deal a body blow to Russian hegemony over Western European energy. Instead, on both fronts, Ottawa appears content to watch from the sidelines.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is currently on a mad dash to secure alternate sources of gas before the onset of winter. In Toronto on Tuesday, Scholz said “Canada is our partner of choice” in transitioning away from Russian energy, adding “we hope that Canadian LNG will play a major role in this.”
The invitation was pooh pooh’ed almost immediately by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who said there has “never been a strong business case” for moving Canadian LNG to Europe.
Oddly, Trudeau doesn’t share the same sentiment when it comes to hydrogen. Despite hydrogen having a dramatically smaller and less-developed European market, one of the signature features of Scholz’s visit was when Trudeau took him to Stephenville, Newfoundland to visit the proposed site of a wind-to-hydrogen facility. The hydrogen project hasn’t obtained regulatory approval and it’s still not entirely clear whether it will go forward.
Canada ranks 15th in the world for proven natural gas reserves, and is the planet’s fifth largest producer of natural gas. The problem is infrastructure.
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There isn’t a single LNG export terminal in Canada. Every single liter of natural gas that Canada manages to export all goes to the United States via pipeline.
This hasn’t been for lack of trying. Natural Resources Canada notes that in recent years it has received proposals for 18 LNG export projects, including five on the East Coast. Just one of them is under construction, while another is not quite poised to break ground.
While it’s unlikely that all 18 were economically viable, Canada’s regulatory framework is notorious at scaring away energy projects. Just in February, a $10-billion LNG export facility planned for Saguenay, Que. was rejected by the Quebec and federal governments largely on the grounds that it would increase greenhouse-gas emissions.
Notably, every single one of the now-languishing East Coast projects were in the planning stages as early as 2015, meaning it’s not infeasible that in a less Byzantine regulatory climate at least one of them could have already been coming online.
In an interview this week, Enbridge CEO Al Monaco hinted at Canada’s infamous latticework of energy industry red tape when he said the country needs to “get out of our own way when it comes to energy and building infrastructure.”
And the odyssey doesn’t end even for projects that manage to jump through Canada’s regulatory hoops. One need only to look at the political nightmare that has accompanied the construction of the LNG Canada terminal in Kitimat, B.C. Upon its scheduled completion in 2025, it will become Canada’s only port serving LNG carrier ships.
The construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline to service the terminal yielded coast-to-coast illegal rail blockades in early 2020 that caused hundreds of millions in economic damage to the Canadian economy. Just in the last 12 months, Coastal GasLink work camps have repeatedly been subjected to illegal blockades and a violent attack by anti-pipeline activists.
A burning blockade impeding access to a Coastal Gaslink camp in February, just a week before the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent natural gas prices to historic highs. including several fires. These types of incidents haven’t been great for foreign investment.© RCMP
This has all shaped up to be a uniquely Canadian story. In other LNG hubs such as the Australia and the United States, the last few years have been defined by a multi-billion-dollar energy boom.
Australia spent the 2010s constructing nearly a dozen LNG export terminals to capitalize on an Asian push to adopt the fuel as a substitute for coal. In the first six months of 2022, LNG exports earned Australia the equivalent of $150 million per day.
The continental U.S. only began exporting LNG in 2016. Now — with a handful of new export facilities coming online in 2022 alone — they’re on track to become the world’s largest single exporter of the fuel.
It’s why, within weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States was able to respond by boosting its LNG exports to unprecedented levels.
