AltaGas says it is on track to build a liquefied natural gas plant in British Columbia by 2018. The Canadian Press is reporting this morning comments made by AltaGas CEO refuting a recent International Energy Agency report saying LNG will be a slow industry to take off, with no facility built in the country by 2020.
“We think we’ll prove them wrong in this decade,” David Cornhill told the Canadian Press in an interview.
The proposed project is headed by the Douglas Channel LNG Consortium, a partnership led by AltaGas Ltd, a midstream company known in the Peace as the operator of the Younger Natural Gas Liquids Extraction Plant in Taylor and the Bear Mountain Wind Park in Dawson Creek.
Cornhill said the company is making progress on plans for the Douglas Channel LNG terminal in British Columbia, which an AltaGas-led consortium took over earlier this year.
“We have nothing that we see at this point that will stop us,” Cornhill continued. “It is a lot of work, there are some tight timelines, so it’s not a walk in the park, but clearly we think it’s achievable.”
AltaGas has yet to make a final investment decision for the Douglas Channel LNG terminal, but the report says the company does plan to make a decision by the end of 2015.
The Douglas Channel project is much smaller than some of the other LNG projects being proposed for B.C., with its first phase designed to ship about 550,000 tonnes of LNG per year.
AltaGas applied to the National Energy Board (NEB) June 1 on behalf of the partnership for a licence to export LNG near Kitimat, British Columbia.