GOLDSTEIN: Carney's energy minister makes business case for natural gas

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Federal Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson says he “knows there are buyers” for Canada’s liquified natural gas (LNG) globally, quite the change in emphasis from former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s argument there was no business case for such projects.

“What I can tell you from the conversations that the prime minister has been having, the minister of foreign affairs has been having, the minister of international trade has been having, the conversations I’ve been having, our allies are very interest in Canadian LNG,” Hodgson said on Tuesday in an interview on The Vassy Kapelos Show.

When asked about competition from the U.S, which is ramping up its LNG export capacity, Hodgson responded: “Our production is much closer to Asian markets. Our production is much cleaner than the Americans in terms of carbon footprint.”

That’s a turnaround from previous arguments by Trudeau, as a parade of foreign leaders came to Canada seeking Canadian LNG as an alternative to importing LNG from Russia, in the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Trudeaus said at the time there was no business case for LNG projects — meaning Canada was (and still is) shipping almost all of its natural gas to the U.S. by pipeline at discount prices — although he was talking about Canada’s potential capacity to ship LNG to European markets by tanker from Canada’s East Coast.

That said, Trudeau was generally unenthusiastic about exporting Canada’s natural gas abroad, advocating instead for developing alternative energy sources such as green hydrogen.

Since then, one large-scale export facility — LNG Canada — has been completed in Kitimat, B.C.

To be fair, this was approved under the Trudeau government.

It contributed $275 million to its completion in 2019, describing the $40-billion project as “the largest single private sector investment in the history of the country … which will ultimately create over 10,000 jobs, as well as lead to billions of dollars in direct government revenues and hundreds of millions of dollars in construction contracts for Indigenous businesses.”

It began shipping LNG by tanker to Asian markets in June, the first project of its kind in North America with direct access to the Pacific Coast.

There are six other LNG projects currently in the works — all based in B.C. — and if all of them are completed, Canada could have the capacity to ship 50 million tonnes of LNG abroad eventually.

However, for that to happen, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government will have to modify or reverse a number of regulations and laws passed by the Trudeau government.

This includes a cap on Canada’s annual oil and gas emissions; the Impact Assessment Act, dubbed the “no pipelines bill” by critics; and Canada’s current target of lowering our greenhouse gas emissions to at least 40% below 2005 levels by 2030.

(According to the latest government data, Canada’s emissions as of 2023 were just 8.5% below 2005 levels and on track to miss the 2030 target.)

Before Parliament adjourned in June, the Carney government passed the Building Canada Act to speed up the construction of so-called nation-building projects, but the details of what projects it is considering haven’t yet been revealed.

Finally, despite Trudeau’s lack of enthusiasm for natural gas in favour of greener energy sources, replacing coal-fired electricity with natural gas globally would be one of the world’s most effective ways of reducing global emissions, since natural gas burns at half the carbon intensity of coal.

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