COMMENTARY: Berlin says “of course” to Canadian LNG, but its first purchase will ship from the Pacific

A radiator in October

Sunday, on CTV

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul answered “of course” on Sunday, on CTV, when asked whether Europe wanted more Canadian liquefied natural gas.

The first German purchase agreement signed for that gas will deliver nothing before the early 2030s.

The minister says yes. The calendar says later.

Two truths. They hold together.

Yes. Later. Elsewhere.

A two-syllable answer. A twenty-year commitment.

Counting in winters

In Berlin, in October, the heating goes back on. The tick of a radiator waking up. The hand laid on it to check.

A European household counts in winters. What this one will cost. What the next one will.

Between now and the early 2030s, four, five, maybe six will go by. None will be heated with Canadian gas.

Berlin counts in winters. The contract counts in the 2030s.

Supply chains under threat

What Wadephul says

The minister gave his reasons. Europe must diversify its sources, he told host Vassy Kapelos. Because of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Because of the threat to the Strait of Hormuz. Because of Bab-el-Mandeb, more recently.

“Our supply chains are under threat,” he said.

Germany is looking to Africa, to Nigeria, he added, but also to Canada and the United States.

Diversifying means no longer depending on a single tap. Or a single strait.

Gas and wind

Will LNG clash with renewables? No, the minister replied. The transition still takes time.

That is frank. Berlin is not selling an end to gas. Berlin is buying time.

Time. Not wind.

Even with European gas demand down more than 17% from pre-crisis levels, according to EU Perspectives, Wadephul’s word carries no qualifier: of course.

Our chains are under threat, Berlin says. It wants safe links.

The May 27 agreement

An embassy in Berlin

On May 27, at the Canadian embassy in Berlin, the German state-owned company SEFE, Securing Energy for Europe, signed a memorandum of understanding with Ksi Lisims LNG.

The volume: 1 million tonnes of LNG a year. The term: up to 20 years. First deliveries: the early 2030s.

The agreement remains conditional on a final sale and purchase agreement. It is SEFE’s first partnership with a Canadian supplier, the company says.

The floating terminal

Ksi Lisims is a floating liquefaction project on British Columbia’s northwest coast. Two facilities of 6 million tonnes each, fed by a 750 km pipeline, according to SEFE.

Natural Resources Canada spoke that day of the first European LNG agreement. Minister Tim Hodgson saw in it what it means to be a 21st-century energy superpower.

The project is partly owned by the Nisga’a Nation, the department noted. It could produce up to 12 million tonnes a year, or 22.4 billion cubic metres, and draw more than $30 billion in investment.

One million tonnes is the German share. One-twelfth.

Signed. Conditional. Distant.

It is still the first European purchase of Canadian LNG. That needs saying too: before May 27, there was none.

A first purchase, signed in Berlin, for a Pacific terminal.

Free on board

Three words of contract

SEFE buys this gas free on board. Three words that say everything.

Under free on board, the buyer takes the cargo at the loading terminal. The gas becomes its property in British Columbia. What it does with it next is its own business.

Berlin’s gas will leave from the Pacific.

Three words, and the destination stops being a promise. It becomes an option.

The route belongs to the buyer.

Swapping cargoes

Canada has no LNG export infrastructure on the Atlantic, OilPrice pointed out in June. To reach Europe from the west coast, a tanker would have to go through the Panama Canal.

Hence the most likely scenario: the swap. German buyers would resell the Canadian cargoes in Asia and receive, in return, gas from suppliers closer to Europe.

This piece argues that Berlin’s “of course” buys a democratic signature first, not a tanker.

Free on board, Canadian gas goes where the buyer decides.

Sixty-five percent full

September 1

Now, the urgency.

As of September 1, Europe’s gas storage was 65.4% full, EU Perspectives reports. More than 16 points below the five-year average. The lowest level for that date since records began, in 2011.

Sixty-five. The lowest in fifteen years of records. A year earlier, storage was 77.4% full.

The gas price crossed €75 per megawatt-hour, a high not seen since early 2023.

Since April, about 40 billion cubic metres have gone into storage, only 59% of the volume needed for winter, according to the same outlet.

What winter will cost

In the eurozone, inflation accelerated to 3.3% in August. Energy prices were up 14.3% year over year, according to the same outlet.

These are central bank numbers. They end up on a heating bill.

The EU requires tanks to be 90% full before winter, with flexibility down to 80% this year.

The analysts the outlet cites see storage topping out at 70% to 75% at the start of the heating season.

The gap will not be closed with a contract for the 2030s.

The cold does not negotiate.

Sixty-five percent is a tank two-thirds full to face an entire winter. Nobody sets out on a trip like that.

The winter of 2026 knows only one gas: the gas that arrives.

Hormuz, then the Red Sea

What the spring cut off

Why is Berlin speaking so fast?

On March 4, QatarEnergy declared force majeure. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz hit about 20% of global LNG supply, according to the US Energy Information Administration. No loaded LNG tanker transited the strait between March 1 and April 24.

As winter ended, Europe’s storage was only 28% full, the same agency noted in April.

Nearly eight weeks. Not one loaded tanker.

A spring without a Qatari tanker. That is the memory Wadephul brings on air.

Meanwhile, Washington was approving export increases at Plaquemines and Elba Island, and the United States shipped 17.9 billion cubic feet of LNG a day in March, according to the same agency. American gas does not wait for the 2030s.

Straits and risks

Hormuz. Then Bab-el-Mandeb, cited by Wadephul. Two narrow passages where Europe decides nothing.

A country that watched its storage melt in the spring no longer picks a supplier on price alone. It picks one on the map.

And yet, on the map, Canada has no strait to cross and no regime to fear. That is all Berlin is looking for.

A map without a strait is worth more than a discount.

Kitimat, twenty-eight million

The terminal already running

A single terminal. The Pacific.

Canada already has one large export terminal. Just one. LNG Canada, in Kitimat, British Columbia, shipped its first cargo in June 2025.

Current capacity: 14 million tonnes a year. The second phase would add as much again, for about 28 million, the Terrace Standard reported on September 24.

The final investment decision could come as early as October, according to Reuters, cited by the paper. An announcement is expected this week, according to industry sources cited by CTV.

Buyers across the Pacific

Asian buyers are looking for greater security of supply, the Terrace Standard writes.

Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei want what Berlin wants. They are simply on the right side of the Pacific.

The federal Major Projects Office, for its part, announces markets in Asia and Europe, and $33 billion in expected private investment.

The Office sees it as the second-largest LNG facility in the world. And the 2025 budget extended LNG export licences from 40 to 50 years.

Europe is in the sentence. Asia is in the order book.

Kitimat looks to Asia. Berlin looks to Kitimat.

One in twenty-eight

The proportion

Let us set the scale. You can check the math.

One million tonnes for SEFE. Twenty-eight million at Kitimat if the second phase gets built. Twelve million at Ksi Lisims, at full capacity.

The German contract is about 3.6% of what Kitimat could produce. A little over 8% of Ksi Lisims.

And Uniper

Uniper, another German energy company, signed a preliminary letter of intent for 2 million tonnes a year at Ksi Lisims, according to OilPrice.

Three million tonnes in all, if everything materializes. A quarter of Ksi Lisims.

That is not nothing. It is not Europe running on Canadian gas either.

Under 4% of Kitimat: Germany is a customer, not a destination.

Five winters

Calendars out of step

Here is the paradox, in calendar form.

Europe needs gas this winter. Its tanks are at their lowest since 2011. Its households are already paying.

Canada promises it gas in the early 2030s. Free on board. From the Pacific.

This winter: nothing. The next one: nothing.

Four winters at least. As many bills.

In between, there will be winters. Radiators turned down a notch. Bills opened with a held breath.

The radiator of 2030

And yet Wadephul’s “of course” is not naive. He is not talking about this winter. He is talking about the winters after, when Hormuz may close again.

The radiator of 2030 will be heated by what gets signed in 2026.

That is what Berlin is doing. It is signing now for a cold it cannot yet see.

No contract heats this winter. It heats the next.

The swap argument

The contract’s best defence

Here is the strongest answer to my worry, and it deserves to be stated in full.

It does not matter whether the Canadian molecule ever touches Europe. If SEFE resells its cargo in Asia and receives gas closer to home, Europe is supplied. Swaps offer lower shipping costs, shorter voyages and more flexibility, OilPrice writes.

Canadian cargoes would go to Japan, South Korea or Taiwan, OilPrice suggests. Europe would receive gas from the United States, Qatar, Algeria or Norway in return.

And the real value, the analysis goes on, is the contractual security of a stable democracy.

The argument holds. It is solid.

What the argument admits

That is fair. And it is exactly my reading.

If the swap works, what Germany buys from Canada is not gas. It is a signature. A supplier who will not cut off the tap as punishment, who will not close a strait, who will honour twenty years.

Qatar is on the list. Qatar, this spring, was blocked.

The swapped gas still has to exist. When a fifth of global supply stays blocked, as it did this spring, there is not much left to swap…

The swap is a democrat’s promise. It needs gas behind it.

Two governments, two sentences

Yesterday, no business case

Not so long ago, the Canadian line was the reverse.

Under Justin Trudeau, the government maintained there was no business case for exporting LNG to Europe, the CTV article recalls. Mark Carney’s government says the opposite.

I am not refereeing between the two. I note that the market changed faster than the sentences.

Two governments. Two sentences. The same ocean.

A promise changes speakers. It stays a promise as long as no ship has left the dock.

Hydrogen, behind schedule

Another Canada–Germany promise dates from 2022: the Canada-Germany Hydrogen Alliance. It piled up delays and missed its original goal of exports as early as 2025, according to the same article.

2022: hydrogen for 2025. 2026: gas for the 2030s.

The dates slip. The winters arrive on time.

Two agreements, two calendars. Winter reads neither.

An Atlantic without a dock

The coast that faces Europe

Canada faces Europe along its east coast. And yet it exports no LNG from there.

In August 2025, in Berlin, Minister Hodgson was already talking about exports to Europe within as little as five years, and possible ports at Churchill and Montreal, according to The Energy Mix. An ICIS analyst said at the time he saw no project on the Atlantic coast at the start-up or investment stage.

More than a year has passed. The first European contract is signed on the Pacific.

What can still be built

I will not tell Canada to build a terminal in the East. That is a choice about markets, territory and climate, and it belongs to others.

I will tell it something else. If it is selling a signature, let it say so.

Canada will have to put numbers on the cargo swaps it promises. Canada will have to guarantee volumes even in a crisis. Canada will have to keep its dates, having watched the hydrogen dates slip.

None of that requires one more terminal. All of it requires candour.

Trust is a contract you honour when it costs you.

With no Atlantic dock, Canada is selling its word.

What Berlin is buying

Insurance, not a tanker

Let us bring it all down to one sentence, then to five.

Berlin is not buying this winter’s gas from Canada. It is buying insurance for the winters when Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb or the Kremlin close something again.

What Berlin is buying is a democratic signature. What Berlin is buying is a supplier without a strait. What Berlin is buying is twenty years of contract. It is buying gas it can resell elsewhere. Above all, it is buying the certainty that no one will cut off its tap to punish it.

Not a tanker. Insurance.

Insurance has a premium. It also has to pay out.

And insurance that starts in 2030 covers the winters of 2030. Canada can sell trust. It cannot sell time.

That is what the September 27 “of course” reveals. Europe no longer picks only the cheapest. It picks the one that will not threaten it.

The price of trust

For Canada, it is a rare chance. And a debt.

A chance, because you rarely get to sell your reliability at market price. A debt, because insurance that does not pay on the day of the claim never sells again.

Canada enters this market with a single terminal, on the other ocean.

Berlin is not buying a molecule. It is buying a word.

The word and the tanker

The Kitimat dock

This week, perhaps, LNG Canada will announce its second phase. Twenty-eight million tonnes, one day, at the far end of the west coast.

Tankers will leave. The cold of the tanks, the rumble of the pumps, a dock that never sleeps.

The dock will rumble. Berlin will wait.

The phrase free on board is short. It weighs twenty years.

I admit it: for a long time I thought “gas for Europe” meant a ship for Europe. This file taught me the phrase free on board.

Next winter

What promise do we want Ottawa to make to Berlin in our name, if it is mostly selling its word and the gas heads to Asia?

A word is kept or lost. It cannot be taken back.

In Berlin, in October, the radiators wake up. None of them is waiting for the Pacific.

Of course, says Berlin, and the first gas will still leave from the Pacific.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• CTV News (BNN Bloomberg) — Johann Wadephul interview on Canadian LNG, September 27, 2026
• SEFE — memorandum of understanding with Ksi Lisims LNG, free on board, May 27, 2026
• Major Projects Office of Canada — LNG Canada Phase 2, page updated July 2, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• EU Perspectives — gas storage, and prices at a high not seen since 2023, September 2, 2026
• Terrace Standard — LNG Canada Phase 2 decision as early as October, September 24, 2026
• OilPrice — the German contract and cargo swaps, June 10, 2026