British oil giant Shell and its partners announced Tuesday the expansion of a vast liquefied natural gas facility in Canada, in order to boost exports to Asia.
The decision by Shell and its four partners in the LNG Canada venture will double the site’s capacity to 28 million tonnes a year, the company said.
The Canada project, located in Kitimat, B.C., allows LNG to be shipped from Canada’s Pacific coast to Asia, providing a shorter route than via the Gulf of Mexico and one that avoids chokepoints such as the Panama Canal.
Shell owns 40 percent of the venture alongside the Malaysian group Petronas, PetroChina, Japan’s Mitsubishi and Korea Gas Corp.
The group approved the first phase of the project in 2018, and the first exports began last year.
The second phase of the project, announced Tuesday, is set to begin commercial operations in the early 2030s.
Tuesday’s announcement comes as Prime Minister Mark Carney has repeatedly said his country “can be an energy superpower”.
He plans to reduce the country’s economic dependence on the United States and build more domestically, in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats against its neighbour.
LNG Canada said the expansion helped the country move “toward becoming one of the world’s top five LNG exporting nations”.
According to Shell’s forecasts, global LNG demand is expected to grow about 60 per cent by 2040 and by around 65 per cent by 2050.
