OPINION: Kitimat doubles its LNG, a good move with a cargo that isn’t ours

A tank in Kitimat

September 28, one billion

A tank that does not exist yet found its future buyers on September 28, 2026, in Kitimat, on the north coast of British Columbia.

Five First Nations. Gitga’at, Gitxaała, Haisla, Kitselas, Kitsumkalum.

Their limited partnership is called MNT Investments. It will be able to put up to C$1 billion into an entity created to buy the future LNG storage tank of Phase 2. So writes LNG Canada.

The company sees it as one of the largest Indigenous ownership positions in major Canadian infrastructure. I note it. I welcome it. Then I look inside.

Minus 160 degrees

In a tank like this, natural gas sleeps as a liquid. It is cooled to about minus 160 degrees Celsius, CBC News notes.

At that cold, steel frosts over. A glove burns. So does skin.

The Haisla Nation has more than 2,000 members, according to the federal project page. The plant is built on its traditional territory.

Families live next to one of the largest private investments in the country. They will hear the cranes. For a long time. Long before the tank earns its first dollar.

The first owner from here will buy the container.

Twenty-eight million tonnes

Two more trains

The final investment decision raises Kitimat’s capacity from 14 to 28 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas a year.

Double. Exactly.

Two new liquefaction units, which the industry calls trains. An LNG tank. A condensate tank. One more loading berth.

Phase 1 had two trains. Phase 2 adds two. The site was designed from the start for four, LNG Canada says.

Along the 670 kilometres of the Coastal GasLink pipeline, five new compressor stations will push more gas to the coast.

The five partners signed together. Shell. Petronas. PetroChina. Mitsubishi. KOGAS.

The next morning in Vancouver

The next day, Mark Carney was set to mark it in Vancouver, at 11 a.m. Pacific time. His office calls it a “historic investment in Canada’s energy industry.”

Energy Minister Tim Hodgson calls it “a massive vote of confidence in Canada.” He adds that the country is building again, and that the world is noticing.

The Major Projects Office expects Kitimat to become the second-largest LNG plant in the world. It expects C$33 billion in private capital there.

Fluor dates the start of production to June 2025. Fifteen months later, it doubles. Fast. Very fast.

Two more trains, and the door to Asia gets wider.

Away from Washington

Ten days to Asia

I consider the September 28 decision a good move. I say so up front. What follows will not be gentle.

The United States buys the lion’s share of Canada’s oil and gas exports, the Globe and Mail notes. Every tonne that heads west loosens that grip a little.

A country that sells mostly to one customer negotiates on its knees. I will not sulk about this win.

According to LNG Canada, a cargo from Kitimat reaches Asia in about 10 days. That is roughly half the trip from the U.S. Gulf Coast, via Panama.

The federal page mentions partners in Asia and Europe. From Kitimat, the short route leads to Asia.

Mitsubishi talks about energy security for Japan. KOGAS talks about demand across Asia. Two allies. Two customers.

The American war on Iran has all but closed the Strait of Hormuz, the Globe writes. The price of seaborne gas has climbed. The timing is well chosen.

The paragraph before the quotes

Critics point out, according to CBC News, that doubling LNG will sharply increase emissions from the province’s gas production. The work is going ahead anyway.

The provincial NDP and Conservatives both back the project ahead of the October 24 election, according to CBC News. The Greens want a moratorium.

I wanted to applaud. I admit it. Then I reread the paragraph that comes just before the partners’ quotes.

And yet one sentence in that paragraph changes everything else.

I put it this way. Kitimat diversifies our customers. Not our owners.

The gas comes from here. The cargo does not.

A good move first, and the ownership bill after.

Other people’s cargo

Each lifts its share

The sentence fits on one line. LNG Canada will keep operating under a structure in which each of the five partners lifts its proportionate share of the LNG produced.

In other words, no common pot. The cargo is split at the gate. Pro rata.

Shell carries the heaviest number. Yet it is the third line you will read twice.

Five parent companies

40% goes to Shell, a London-based group.

25% to Petronas, Malaysia’s state-owned company.

15% to PetroChina.

15% to Mitsubishi, the Japanese conglomerate.

5% to KOGAS, South Korea’s state-owned company.

None has its head office in Canada.

Five names. None from here.

Every tonne leaves port in someone else’s name.

Fifteen percent for PetroChina

4.2 million tonnes

Back to the third line.

The Energy Mix describes PetroChina as a company controlled by the Chinese state. It will lift 15% of whatever leaves Kitimat.

At full capacity, 15% of 28 million tonnes would come to 4.2 million tonnes a year. That is arithmetic. Not an announcement.

This is not a takeover. It is a share. A share of a plant we present as our answer to dependence.

The federal project page names none of the five partners. Not Shell. Not PetroChina.

Where will it go?

PetroChina’s own words

The head of PetroChina Canada, Zhiyong Liu, says he is proud to be among the partners that approved Phase 2.

He talks about stabilizing global supply. He talks about providing “the low-carbon energy the world needs.”

In Kitimat, Phase 1 flaring exceeded provincial permits. The regulator issued an order on April 21, The Energy Mix reports.

Beijing is the West’s foremost threat. That is no reason to give up on Kitimat. It is a reason to count, every year, the tonnes lifted by a company it controls.

We wanted to escape one customer that was too powerful. We are left with five foreign owners. One of them held by Beijing.

Beijing did not buy Kitimat. It fills ships’ holds from it.

The Irving contract

US$7.5 billion

On September 29, Fluor announced that its joint venture with JGC Corporation will build Phase 2. From engineering to commissioning.

Fluor will book its share, US$7.5 billion, in the third quarter of its 2026 fiscal year.

Its head office is in Irving, Texas. The worksite is in British Columbia.

The same joint venture delivered Phase 1, handed over in October 2025, Fluor notes.

The work will run through a Canadian joint venture, split equally between Fluor Canada and a JGC subsidiary. The boots will be on the Pacific coast. The contract share will go on the books of a Texas company.

MidOcean inside Petronas’s share

There is a finer point. In September 2025, the American firm MidOcean Energy acquired a 20% stake in key Petronas assets in Canada, including its share of LNG Canada. The Globe reports it.

We are building Kitimat to depend less on Washington. The plant contract is counted in Irving. A fraction of Petronas’s share runs through an American company.

This is no scandal. It is the real map of capital. It does not follow our speeches.

Diversification has an address in Texas too.

Thirty-three billion, all private

The shareholders’ risk

The opposite argument is strong. It deserves its best form.

The capital is private. C$33 billion, according to the Major Projects Office. No taxpayer puts it up.

Suppose the LNG market turns just as Phase 2 starts up, in the early 2030s. The five partners would take the loss. Not the treasury.

Even Coastal GasLink, according to TC Energy, structured its agreement to limit its exposure to cost overruns.

Why demand the cargo when you do not carry the risk?

Fifty years of licence

Because the state carries something other than capital.

Budget 2025 raised the maximum term of LNG export licences from 40 to 50 years. Bill C-15 received royal assent on March 26.

It also provides for restoring the accelerated capital cost allowance on equipment for low-emission LNG plants.

On July 2, Ottawa and the B.C. government in Victoria signed an agreement to speed up permits, financing and construction for the major corridors. Kitimat’s is one of them.

Richard Brooks, of Stand.earth, sees Phase 2 as a project that will depend on taxpayer-funded credits, according to The Energy Mix. That is an activist’s voice. The measures themselves are on the federal page.

The capital is private. The time is public. So is the rule. So is the deferred tax.

Ottawa does not advance the money. It advances 50 years.

Fifty billion for the treasuries

An estimate in three voices

I have to publish the number that bothers me most.

LNG Canada estimates, together with the governments of British Columbia and Canada, that Phase 2 could bring in more than $50 billion in government revenue. Over the life of the project.

That is more than the 33 billion in private capital. If the estimate holds, governments will collect more than the partners invest.

That is true. I write it. It does not change what follows.

The figure adds up direct spending, taxes, royalties and indirect activity. It is spread over the life of a plant. It is not a cheque. It is an estimate put forward by the builder.

Four thousand hard hats

Phase 2 will host up to 4,000 construction jobs at peak on the Kitimat site. About 2,100 more along the pipeline.

Once finished, it will add about 90 permanent positions and 150 contractor positions. There are already more than 400.

More than 50,000 Canadians contributed to Phase 1, and more than 25,000 to the pipeline, according to LNG Canada.

Coastal rain will drum on thousands of hard hats. Those wages will stay here. Good.

And yet neither the paycheque nor the royalty changes the name written on the loaded tonne.

A revenue stream is not a cargo.

When Hormuz lifts the price

The trading margin

Shell said it on September 29, as quoted by CNBC. Phase 2 connects Canadian resources to its global LNG portfolio. To its trading capability. To its customer reach.

The sentence is honest. It says whom the plant serves.

Hodgson talks about confidence. Shell talks about portfolio. Both are right. They are not the same pockets.

The Globe reports that traders expect fears of a shortage to last well beyond the winter.

When the price of seaborne gas climbs, the trading margin goes to whoever owns the cargo. Here, to the trading floors of five foreign companies.

The gas has left

The gas is extracted in the province’s northeast, often by fracking, CBC News notes.

The gas is pushed through 670 kilometres of pipe.

The gas is liquefied by workers from here, at minus 160 degrees.

It is loaded at Kitimat in the name of five foreign companies.

And the share lifted in the name of a Canadian parent company, out of 28 million tonnes, takes no time to count.

Zero.

The carrier sails. The dock empties. The cold leaves with its owner.

The welder will have built the cold. He will not sell it. The family that hears the flare roar at night will not set its price.

Zero is our share of the cargo.

The container and the contents

A billion for steel

Back to the tank.

At Kitimat, it is the piece of Phase 2 whose Indigenous ownership is written in black and white. Five nations. Up to a billion.

I welcome that billion. It is rare. It goes to nations that will live next to the worksite. Next to its trucks. Next to its flare.

On July 14, LNG Canada had announced the option. On September 28, the final decision gives it substance.

What the tank holds

And yet a tank holds what it is given. It does not own it.

The LNG sleeping inside will belong to the five partners. Pro rata.

A full tank makes no noise. The cold stays behind the steel, in silence, until the carrier comes.

There is our model in one image. The steel is ours. The cold is someone else’s.

You can read this tank as a door or as a ceiling. I read it as a door. Provided someone pushes it.

They will own the steel, others will own the cold.

Early 2030s

A market that will have moved

Phase 2 is due to begin commercial operation in the early 2030s, according to CNBC.

TC Energy plans to begin expanding the pipeline in early 2027.

The partners were aiming for a decision by the end of the year, the Globe notes. They took it three months early.

June 30, 2025, first cargo, according to LNG Canada. September 28, 2026, the decision to double. The early 2030s, start-up.

In the meantime, the market will have changed its face. The Energy Mix cites analysts who see a global gas glut coming. Others see a shortage. No one knows the price of the first tonne.

If the Hormuz price holds until then…

Stakes for sale

In January, Shell and Mitsubishi were looking to sell their stakes, according to The Energy Mix.

The Globe writes that some partners want to cash in part of their holdings. Global private equity is knocking at the door.

Who will lift Mitsubishi’s share when the first Phase 2 carrier leaves the dock?

The cargo does not only have foreign owners. It has mobile owners. Stakes that get sold. Names that change.

Nothing says who will own the next share.

Sovereign over the rules

What we own

We own the rule. Parliament passed the law that lengthens export licences.

We own the licence. The Canada Energy Regulator raised the annual limit on LNG Canada’s licence ahead of Phase 2.

We own the fast lane. The project was referred to the Major Projects Office on September 11, 2025.

A share of the pipe is ours too. TC Energy, of Calgary, holds 35% of Coastal GasLink and operates it, according to the Globe.

We do not own the tonne.

A country that owns the ground

That is what Kitimat reveals. Canada diversifies its buyers without diversifying its owners. It writes the rules. It does not do the trading.

This is not Carney’s fault. The structure in which each partner lifts its share dates from Phase 1. Phase 2 extends it. Without debating it.

The good move is still good. It is incomplete.

Sovereign over the rules, absent from the goods.

One tank is not enough

A third phase

On September 28, five foreign companies decided to double Kitimat. Five First Nations got a tank. Governments got an estimate.

The next table will not be the same. Canada will come to it with a plant that runs. A pipeline that doubles. A 50-year licence to offer.

What we will sign

For a third phase, would we demand a share of the cargo, even at the risk of scaring off the capital that pays for the first two?

The tank will be there. Full of cold.

It will say what we managed to own. And what we let go.

A good move from here, a cargo from elsewhere.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• LNG Canada — Phase 2 final investment decision, September 28, 2026
• Fluor — Phase 2 construction contract, September 29, 2026
• Major Projects Office — LNG Canada Phase 2 project page, accessed September 29, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• The Globe and Mail — LNG Canada’s partners and the expansion, September 28, 2026
• CBC News — Phase 2 approved amid criticism over emissions, September 29, 2026
• CNBC — Shell backs the LNG Canada expansion, September 29, 2026