LNG Canada is a joint venture consortium—made up of Shell, PETRONAS, PetroChina, Mitsubishi and Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS)—that plans to build a liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal in the town of Kitimat, British Columbia (BC). The facility will liquefy fracked gas from BC and Alberta so it can be shipped internationally by tanker. LNG is primarily destined for the markets of consortium partners (China, Japan, Korea and Malaysia). In 2018, the joint partners made a final investment decision to proceed with construction of Phase One,1 with plans to produce 14 million tonnes of LNG per year,2 and potential to double that capacity through a future Phase Two.

The BC government’s new fiscal framework for LNG is fundamentally at odds with the province’s CleanBC climate plan. Details in the government agreement with LNG Canada show that BC is subsidizing fossil fuel production at a time when we need to keep it in the ground. The BC government made four major concessions in the …