Thousands of other construction workers may be seeing more work this year in northwest B.C. as a consortium of resource giants, including Shell Canada, are planning a $12 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility at Kitimat.
The project could see up to 12 million tonnes of LNG exported from Kitimat each year. What the companies are now calling LNG Canada would be built in two stages, with each producing six million tonnes. A news release from Shell says there is an option to expand the project beyond the 12 million tonne capacity.
Shell’s partners are Korea Gas Corporation, Mitsubishi Corporation, and PetroChina Company Limited. While the consortium released no price estimates, reports in Japanese media and from industry sources said the project could cost as much as US$12 billion.
Shell holds a 40 per cent working interest. The partners each hold a 20 per cent working interest.
Kitimat Mayor Joanne Monaghan said the city is getting ready. “Council have been aware of it and have rolled up their sleeves for almost a year and half to two years,” the mayor said.
One aspect was making sure Kitimat is ready for the project, Monaghan said: “We had to make sure there were hospital facilities, rental facilities, that we had housing available. We were getting all our inventories together. Now we know and now we can go full blast ahead.”
She hopes that Kitimat will return its population peak of between 10,000 and 15,000 residents. “If they have the five to seven thousand construction workers they’re looking for, they will bring in workers from all over B.C., probably all over Canada,” Monaghan said.
Two other LNG projects in Kitimat are already underway. The Kitimat LNG project, led by Apache Corporation, Encana Corp, and EOG Resources plan to start up a Kitimat LNG plant in 2015. That project has been approved by the National Energy Board but is still waiting for a final go ahead from the boards of the three corporations, expected now in the fourth quarter of this year.
A separate project, BC LNG, owned by the Haisla Nation in partnership with Houston-based LNG Partners, will act as broker and exporter for other LNG companies, facilitating exports to Asia from a barge based facility, with the first shipment expected within two years.
