Work On Controversial Coastal GasLink Pipeline To Continue

Construction work on the Coastal GasLink pipeline in British Columbia will resume this week after a holiday break despite an eviction notice served to the company that leads the project by a local First Nation.

In a tweet, the company said “This week, we'll continue to remobilize construction crews across the right-of-way in anticipation of work resumption. Clearing, grading, workforce accommodation establishment & other activities are expected to continue as scheduled.”

The Canadian Press reports that Coastal GasLink will begin with safety refresh meetings and then restart construction of the pipeline. The company announced its plans in a statement that came on the heels of news that the Wet’suwet’en First Nation sent Coastal GasLink a letter demanding that it remove its workers from a part of its territory that they were trespassing on.

The letter came several days after the Supreme Court of British Columbia granted Coastal GasLink an injunction against members of the Wet’suwet’en nation and other opponents of the pipeline.

The Coastal GasLink project is majority owned by TC Energy, but the company recently agreed to sell a 65-percent stake in the pipeline to KKR and the Alberta Investment Management Corporation.

The infrastructure is vital for the LNG Canada project—the first of its kind to be built in Canada—to which it will supply natural gas from Dawson Creek, close to the border with Alberta, to Kitimat, where the liquefaction trains of LNG Canada will be built.

LNG Canada is a project of Shell, with a 40-percent stake, Malaysia’s Petronas with 25 percent, PetroChina with 15 percent, Mitsubishi with 15 percent, and South Korea’s Kogas with 5 percent.

The facility, which is expected to become operational before 2025, will initially have two liquefaction trains, each with a capacity of 6.5 million tons of LNG with the prospect of adding another two trains at a later stage, bringing the total capacity of the facility in Kitimat, in northern British Columbia, to as much as 26 million tons annually.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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