Pieridae Delays Nova Scotia LNG Decision While Chevron Unveils New Plans in B.C.

Calgary-based Pieridae Energy Inc., the company behind the C$10-billion Goldboro liquefied natural gas (LNG) development in Guysborough County, Nova Scotia, has postponed the go/no-go decision on its investment by a year.

The company’s 20-year deal to supply German utility Uniper with half of the plant’s output is now set to close no later than September 30, 2020, with deliveries to begin sometime between November 30, 2024 and May 31, 2025, industry newsletter JWN Energy reports.

“These extensions allow us to complete the work needed to make a final investment decision for the Goldboro Project,” said Pieridae CEO Alfred Sorensen.

Over the last 16 months, opponents have warned that Goldboro could wipe out “hard-fought reductions” in the province’s carbon pollution and urged the German government to withdraw its US$4-billion loan guarantee for the project. “A publicly covered guarantee of the Federal Government for the promotion and import of fracked gas from North America to Europe must not be granted,” stated the letter, addressed to German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze and Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier. It describes the loan guarantee as “rather a gross financial mistake against the German and international climate goals.”

In British Columbia, meanwhile, Chevron Corporation unveiled plans to resurrect the delayed Woodside LNG project near Kitimat and power its entire operation with hydroelectricity, in a bid to align with the province’s new climate plan. The Globe and Mail says the project site is at Bish Cove, on Haisla Nation land.

The plant “will outperform current best-in-class global LNG plants and the more stringent government of B.C.’s LNG intensity benchmark,” the company said in a 186-page filing with federal and provincial regulators. “The [Kitimat LNG] expansion project will utilize electric-motor-drive technology for all liquefaction process and utility compressors, pumps, and fans, and will purchase power from BC Hydro.”

The plan calls for a final investment decision in 2022 or 2023, completion of a first phase of construction in 2029, and export capacity of 12 million tonnes of LNG per year, up from an earlier target of 10 million tonnes. If a second phase is built, the plant’s production will increase to 18 million tonnes per year.

The Globe has details of the regulatory steps the project will have to follow, including the opposition it’s already running into for the Pacific Trail Pipeline, which would carry natural gas from the B.C. Interior to Kitimat through unceded Wet’suwet’en territory.