EDITORIAL: Energy independence is true 'nation building'

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While it’s a long way from making us an energy superpower, the start-up on Sunday of Canada’s first large-scale liquified natural gas plant in Kitimat, B.C., capable of shipping beyond the U.S. market, is a welcome first step.

LNG Canada, a joint venture of Shell PLC, Petronas, PetroChina, Mitsubishi Corp. and Kogas began production Sunday, according to the Reuters news agency, with its first tanker shipment for export scheduled for the middle of this year.

That it has taken this long to get an LNG plant online, capable of shipping our natural gas abroad, when we are the world’s fifth-largest producer and sixth-largest exporter of natural gas — but until now only to the U.S., meaning it has to be sold at a huge discount — is disappointing.

It has also cost our economy billions of dollars annually.

This even as many countries, including Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Greece, South Korea and Japan, have expressed an interest in buying Canadian LNG after Russia, a major producer and exporter, invaded Ukraine in February 2022, putting its continued supplies in doubt.

With two smaller Canadian LNG export facilities by Woodfibre LNG and Cedar LNG now under construction and expected to be completed between 2027 and 2028, Canadians will now have real-world examples of whether these plants are economically viable or not, as critics claim.

Meanwhile, Canada’s Trans Mountain pipeline — built by the federal government at a cost of $34 billion, five times the original estimate — remains Canada’s only way to ship Canadian oil to Asia and other international markets, while also supplying the U.S.

This despite the fact that Canada is the world’s fourth-largest producer and third-largest exporter of crude oil, again costing our economy billions of dollars annually because most of it is sold to the Americans at a huge discount.

Oil and natural gas infrastructure should be among the “nation-building” projects Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government earmarks for green-lighting because, until now, the lengthy regulatory process for approving them has discouraged private investors.

Given the massive loss to the Canadian economy that has resulted from this, it’s time we stopped cutting our own economic throats by expanding global access to our oil and gas resources and making ourselves less dependent on the United States.

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