TransCanada Corp. says it has garnered support from 19 of 20 elected First Nations bands along the company’s Coastal GasLink pipeline route that would feed LNG Canada’s planned liquefied natural gas terminal in British Columbia.
TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard said the Calgary-based pipeline builder has secured support from 95 per cent of the elected bands on the route from northeastern B.C. to the West Coast.
“We’ve worked our tails off to build good, strong relationships with these different First Nations,” he said in an interview on Wednesday.
Mr. Howard declined to name the holdout but an official familiar with Coastal GasLink said the elected Haisla Nation Council, which backs LNG Canada’s proposed terminal in Kitimat, has yet to sign a final commercial agreement to support the pipeline project.
Royal Dutch Shell PLC-led LNG Canada wants to construct an export terminal on the Haisla’s traditional territory in Kitimat. As the host territory for the terminal, the Haisla’s negotiations with TransCanada are complex, the official said.
The elected Wet’suwet’en First Nation signed a project agreement with TransCanada in 2015, one of the first six Indigenous groups to back the pipeline that would transport natural gas from the North Montney region in northeast B.C. to the planned liquefaction plant in Kitimat.
Over and above the 20 elected bands, Coastal GasLink is also consulting with the Office of the Wet’suwet’en, which includes hereditary chiefs who oppose the pipeline route (and which is separate from the elected Wet’suwet’en band).
Protesters at the Unist’ot’en camp in northwestern B.C. are seeking to block the pipeline project, if it forges ahead with construction in early 2019. “They are not a mainstream group in terms of the First Nations that we’ve dealt with,” Coastal GasLink president Rick Gateman said last week after he spoke at the Canada Gas and LNG conference in Vancouver. “There’s probably always going to be small pockets of opposition and there’s not much that, ultimately, we can do about that.”
Shell and the three co-owners of LNG Canada are expected to make a final investment decision by the end of 2018.
LNG Canada chief executive officer Andy Calitz said last week that he is optimistic about global economic conditions for the fuel, compared with the gloomy outlook nearly two years ago, when the Shell-led consortium delayed its investment decision.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance rated LNG Canada as a "wait-and-see" project in an analysis this spring, adding that activity in Kitimat "could easily ramp up” if market conditions improve.
No LNG project is under construction in British Columbia, despite energy companies unveiling more than 20 proposals in the province from 2011 to 2015.
In July, 2017, Pacific NorthWest LNG cancelled its plans to build a B.C. export terminal on Lelu Island in the Port of Prince Rupert. Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas, which led Pacific NorthWest LNG, remains interested in British Columbia.
Last August, Petronas considered acquiring a South Korean firm’s 15-per-cent stake in LNG Canada. But Korea Gas Corp. (Kogas) has so far maintained its minority interest.
“As a normal course of business, Petronas continues to look at all opportunities to monetize its world-class inventory of natural gas resources in North Montney,” a Petronas spokesman said in a statement. “Petronas’s business commitment and long-term investment strategy in Canada continues via its subsidiary, Progress Energy Canada Ltd.”
TransCanada’s Mr. Howard said Coastal GasLink will be releasing further details of its newly signed pacts with First Nations. “We are not at liberty to disclose until the First Nation is ready to announce,” he said. “We hope to be announcing the next set of agreements we have in the coming months.”
Elected bands that have already inked deals with Coastal GasLink include the Skin Tyee, Doig River, Halfway River, Kitselas and McLeod Lake.
The proposed $4.8-billion pipeline would run 670 kilometres from the Groundbirch area near Dawson Creek to LNG Canada’s site in Kitimat. TransCanada estimates more than 2,000 construction jobs could be created related to Coastal GasLink.
Brent Jang