LNG Canada, which began operations in mid-2025, is the country’s first major export facility. In late September, the consortium behind it gave the green light to a $33bn expansion that will add five new compressor stations to the Coastal GasLink pipeline and significantly increase output in the coming years.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has added both LNG Canada and the proposed Ksi Lisims LNG project to its Major Projects List, promising streamlined federal support. “Canada is building big again,” Carney said at a Vancouver press conference. “One office. One point of contact. One goal: get to the right decision, rapidly and efficiently.”
But since commissioning began in late 2024, the Kitimat facility has faced technical problems. In 2025, it burned 350 million cubic metres of gas due to an integrity issue with its main flare stack, placing it among the world’s highest sources of flaring emissions. Local residents described the noise as “on a whole other level” and said the flaring has worsened air quality. One resident, speaking on condition of anonymity because the plant is a major local employer, said: “I am devastated about the changes to my home territory. I can’t always see the stars like I used to.”
Critics also point to the track records of the consortium’s members: Shell (majority shareholder), Petronas, Korea Gas, PetroChina and Mitsubishi. Shell, which also signed a deal to buy two million tonnes of LNG from Ksi Lisims, faces longstanding allegations over oil spills in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. The United Nations estimates Shell spilled more than 13 million barrels of crude in at least 7,000 incidents since 1958. “The firm has been associated with these major human rights violations and all sorts of legal cases around actual violence against communities and severe environmental devastation in Nigeria, and yet tries to act as if their operations here are somehow not the same,” said Anna Zalik, a York University professor who has studied Shell in Nigeria for two decades.
Shell declined an interview but provided a statement saying the characterisation “is not one we recognise”. The company said it is “committed to honesty, integrity and respect for people” and that its Nigerian operations involved “complex and contested issues, including large-scale oil theft, sabotage and illegal refining carried out by organized criminal gangs”.
The Coastal GasLink pipeline that supplies the project crosses Wet’suwet’en territories without the consent of the nation’s Hereditary Chiefs, sparking Indigenous-led protests and arrests in 2020. Majority owner of the pipeline is New York investment firm KKR.
Marc Lee, senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said the trade war with the US is being used to fast-track projects at the expense of environmental protection and community impacts. “It’s all about investment,” he said. “We’re essentially promising to liquidate this resource that should be the inheritance of British Columbians for hundreds of years.”
Carney’s office declined an interview request and referred questions to the Privy Council Office, which did not respond prior to publication.