Liquid Gold: LNG in B.C.

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As demand for gas escalates across North America, business is eyeing the opportunity to build a liquid natural gas import hub in the Gulf islands. But not everyone's buying.

Chuck Childress likes to tell people his Texada Island home is protected by three moats: Howe Sound, Jervis Inlet and Malaspina Strait – the three bodies of water that need to be crossed to get there from Vancouver.

Like many of the 1,100 residents who call the biggest Gulf Island home, he enjoys the isolation of life on an island that’s a ferry ride away from Powell River and has only a couple of restaurants, a gas station and little else. “Most people move here because it’s affordable paradise and because this is the most pristine Gulf Island,” he says.

Viewed from the seat of a plane overlooking the area, his claim seems preposterous. Huge aggregate quarries scar the north end, like scabs of exposed rock. Further south monstrous BC Hydro power lines rise out of Malaspina Strait like giant-squid tentacles. The lifelines of Vancouver Island power cross the island in a buzz cut through the forest and disappear into the dark waters of the Strait of Georgia. In the same vicinity, below ground, is Terasen Gas’s buried natural-gas pipeline. Old mines litter the island.

But on the ground, his claim seems true. More than half the island remains undeveloped. Healthy stands of second-growth forest surround almost all the rural properties. Retirees from Calgary, Vancouver and even Salt Spring Island, attracted by lax building codes and cheap land, are driving a boom on the island; finding a tradesperson is almost impossible. The island’s first million-dollar mansion was just finished. But some fear the idyllic life is in jeopardy, and the culprit is liquid natural gas, a.k.a. LNG.

Texada and Kitimat, near Prince Rupert, are both home to proposals to build LNG-import facilities – a new phenomenon to most of North America.

Natural gas, or methane, is the cleanest-burning fossil fuel. It heats our homes and is increasingly being used in power generation as a greener alternative to coal and a chea­per alternative to oil.

Western Canada’s Sedimentary Basin, spanning Alberta, Northern B.C. and most of Saskatchewan, has an abundant supply, which for decades has been transported to domestic and U.S. customers through a network of pipelines that spiderweb to almost every corner of the continent.

But that domestic supply can no longer meet increasing North American demand. One solution is to ship the gas by freighter from overseas suppliers, and the only practical way to ship natural gas is to turn it into a liquid by cooling it to -164 degrees Celsius (which also reduces its volume by 600 times). Import hubs then unload the tankers, convert the liquid back to gas and funnel it into pipelines.

Most import facilities include a natural-gas power-generation facility. Not only does a power plant provide a built-in customer for the off-loaded natural gas, the excess heat produced in power generation is used to warm the liquid methane back into a gas before it’s funnelled into pipelines.

Enter Texada and Kitimat. They’re just two of 64 sites proposed for LNG plants across North America, eight in Canada and 10 on the west coast of North America.

In July 2007, Surrey-based WestPac LNG Corp. proposed a joint LNG -import facility and natural-gas-powered generator for Kiddie Point on Texada Island. Texada may seem an odd choice, but it’s actually LNG heaven. WestPac can tap into the BC Hydro power lines and Terasen Gas’s natural-gas pipeline to Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland with a minimum of infrastructure development.

The Texada Action Now Community Association (TAN), a group of island residents that bills itself as pro-sustainability (rather than anti-development), greeted the propo­sal with disgust.

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