{"id":378974,"date":"2025-08-28T00:32:29","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T00:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/378974\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T00:32:29","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T00:32:29","slug":"canada-wants-to-sell-lng-to-germany-critics-say-its-a-race-against-time-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/378974\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada wants to sell LNG to Germany. Critics say it\u2019s a race against time – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canada has entered renewed discussions with Germany<\/a> on supplying liquefied\u00a0natural gas, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday \u2014 a prospect critics say should have become reality years ago.<\/p>\n

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Speaking alongside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin, Carney said his government will make announcements \u201cin the next two weeks\u201d on new port infrastructure funding, which could mark the first major \u201cnational interest\u201d projects approved under legislation passed in the spring.<\/p>\n

Carney specifically identified the Contrecoeur expansion of the Port of Montreal, which is set to increase container capacity by as much as 40 per cent, and revitalizing the Churchill port in northern Manitoba.<\/p>\n

The latter project \u201cwould open up enormous LNG (export potential), plus other opportunities\u201d for shipping critical minerals and metals to Europe, Carney said, creating \u201ca new port, effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters in Berlin at a separate event, Energy Minister Tim Hodgson said the goal being sold by Canadian proponents to German buyers \u201cis being able to ship in as little as five years.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Adam Pankratz, a faculty lecturer at the University of British Columbia\u2019s Sauder School of Business, said the new timeline is \u201ctheoretically feasible,\u201d but he\u2019s not holding his breath.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would view everything the government says with the context of the last (few) years of not being able to get anything done,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil we see that the situation has definitively changed, I don\u2019t believe there\u2019s any reason to take the government at their word on anything on this file, even if I am hopeful that that is the change that is underfoot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tHas the ‘business case’ changed?\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

In 2022, months after Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine led Germany and other European nations to look for alternatives to Russian oil, then-prime minister Justin Trudeau publicly questioned the \u201cbusiness case\u201d<\/a> for Canada becoming an LNG supplier across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere are a number of potential projects \u2026 that are on the books for which there has never been a strong business case because of the distance from the gas fields,\u201d Trudeau told reporters at the time alongside then-German chancellor Olaf Scholz.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are looking right now, and companies are looking, at whether the new context makes it a worthwhile business case to make those investments.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Exactly three years later, Hodgson said the business case has indeed changed.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think there was a view prior to a few years ago that the need for natural gas would be relatively minor and relatively short-term,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what we all realize post-Ukraine, post what\u2019s happening with AI, that natural gas is going to be a transition fuel that\u2019s in greater demand in Germany and for a longer period of time. Canada has the opportunity to be a great partner to Germany in that regard.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Another change, Hodgson said, is the launch of LNG Canada\u2019s first shipments of liquefied\u00a0gas to Asia in June from its just-opened export facility in Kitimat, B.C.<\/p>\n

The first phase of the project is expected to export 14 million tonnes of gas per year. A second phase under consideration would double that output.<\/p>\n

Five other export facilities are in various stages of construction or regulatory approval \u2014 all of them in British Columbia, and all of them aimed at supplying LNG to Asia. The projects are expected to begin operating between 2027 and 2030.<\/p>\n

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Efforts to build export capacity on the East Coast have been more difficult. A planned expansion of the Saint John LNG facility in New Brunswick that would allow for export died in 2023<\/a> when the Spanish company behind the proposal balked at rising costs.<\/p>\n

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The Quebec government rejected a proposal for an LNG facility in Quebec\u2019s Saguenay region in 2021, amid widespread opposition to the project.<\/p>\n

Yet in recent months, Premier Fran\u00e7ois Legault has repeatedly said Quebecers are more open to fossil-fuel projects in the province due to the ongoing trade war with the United States.<\/p>\n

In July, Legault confirmed that members of his team have met with representatives of Marinvest Energy Canada, a new subsidiary of a Norwegian energy company that says it wants to build an LNG export facility in Quebec.<\/p>\n

The premier said at the time that the project, which would be built along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River in the province\u2019s C\u00f4te-Nord region, was \u201cvery preliminary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hodgson told reporters Wednesday that Germany buyers had expressed interest in \u201cswapping\u201d LNG imported from other countries for Asia-bound exports from B.C., calling it a short-term solution as Canada builds up its eastern export capacity.<\/p>\n

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