A tanker is headed to South Korea with the first shipment of liquefied natural gas from Canada, which hopes to reduce its export reliance on its neighbor.
By Ian Austen
Reporting from Ottawa
July 7, 2025
It is the first natural gas shipment from a major Canadian plant to Asia as Canada looks to diversify its export markets in the aftermath of President Trump’s trade war and annexation threats.
The shipment on the Gaslog Glasgow comes a decade after a gas line project in Kitimat, British Columbia, was approved. Prime Minister Mark Carney has trumpeted the project, LNG Canada, whose plant, pipeline, gas fields, docks and other assets are worth 48 billion Canadian dollars (about $35 billion).
“Canada has what the world needs,” Mr. Carney said the day the tanker set off last week. “By turning aspiration into action, Canada can become the world’s leading energy superpower.”
The Canadian gas shipment to Asia comes amid domestic tensions over energy production.
Alberta, an oil-rich but landlocked province, is demanding more ports and the ability to run more pipelines through British Columbia to further globalize its own oil and gas market. But it’s meeting resistance from British Columbians who don’t relish more tanker traffic along their coastline or pipelines over their mountains. Environmental groups argue that exporting natural gas is incompatible with Canada’s commitments to fight climate change. And many Indigenous people are contesting a new federal law to accelerate the approval of pipelines on their lands.
A vast majority of Canada’s oil and gas flow south. It sold about $6 billion worth of natural gas to the United States last year. But increased U.S. gas production has led to a decline in Canadian exports since 2010. And in the past 10 years, the United States has become the largest supplier of liquefied gas in the world.
For Canadian companies, exports to Asia offer an escape from the low prices for natural gas in the saturated North American market.
The likelihood that Canada would ship gas to other markets increased when Russia invaded Ukraine and made Moscow a global trade outcast, said Prof. Kent Fellows, an energy economist at the University of Calgary. Now, he added, Mr. Trump’s tariffs and disregard for trade agreements have made nations “more skeptical” about the stability of long-term U.S. trading relationships.
The Kitimat plant is fed by the Coastal GasLink pipeline that runs over 400 miles. Shell, the largest shareholder in LNG Canada, has characterized the project as a way to reduce carbon emissions. It predicted Canadian natural gas would replace coal for tasks like generating electricity and would wean Asian countries off coal.
LNG Canada’s facility in Kitimat, British Columbia, in November.
“We expect that supplying L.N.G. will be the biggest contribution Shell will make to the energy transition over the next decade,” Cederic Cremers, an executive in the oil company’s natural gas division, said in a statement.
Our economics reporters — based in New York, London, Brussels, Berlin, Hong Kong and Seoul — are digging into every aspect of the tariffs causing global turmoil. They are joined by dozens of reporters writing about the effects on everyday people.
Shell did not respond to a request for an estimate of how much coal it anticipates will be displaced by Canadian natural gas.
But Professor Fellows said many factors made it virtually impossible to forecast how much natural gas might take over from coal. “It’s somewhere between 0 percent and 100 percent, and that’s about all anyone can say with any confidence,” he said.
Demand for energy is so high in places like China that any Canadian natural gas is likely to merely be added to the mix rather displace anything. And, in other countries, it may simply replace natural gas from other countries, he said.
Some environmentalists question the wisdom of replacing coal with gas, given its effects on the climate. Methane, the primary component in natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas. And the processes of turning natural gas into a liquid, transporting it and returning the liquid to gas can leak methane.
ring the pipeline’s construction, the project emerged with a blemished environmental record.
British Columbia’s Environmental Assessment Office has fined Coastal GasLink just under 1.4 million Canadian dollars (about $1 million) since May 2022. Most of the infractions were for improper erosion and sediment control measures.
Several Indigenous communities that support the project have partnerships with LNG Canada, including a joint venture on the tugboat service that guides ships to and from the plant’s docks. But the pipeline’s construction divided one Indigenous community, leading to clashes with the police.
While the pipeline had obtained an agreement with the leadership of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation elected under Canadian law, members of the community who recognize only hereditary leaders opposed having the pipeline on their land and blockaded a construction road in 2021. A judge found the police had made “grossly offensive, racist and dehumanizing” remarks about the Indigenous protesters. Three protesters were convicted of contempt of court in January.
Mr. Carney has pressed ahead to try to remake the economy. He recently moved a bill through Parliament to speed up federal approval of major infrastructure projects and set up a fund to help finance ones that would allow Canada to be less reliant on U.S. trade.
LNG Canada is expected to double the capacity of the Kitimat plant. And there are at least six other natural gas plants in development.
Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times based in Ottawa. He covers politics, culture and the people of Canada and has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at austen@nytimes.com.
Our economics reporters — based in New York, London, Brussels, Berlin, Hong Kong and Seoul — are digging into every aspect of the tariffs causing global turmoil. They are joined by dozens of reporters writing about the effects on everyday people.
Shell did not respond to a request for an estimate of how much coal it anticipates will be displaced by Canadian natural gas.
But Professor Fellows said many factors made it virtually impossible to forecast how much natural gas might take over from coal. “It’s somewhere between 0 percent and 100 percent, and that’s about all anyone can say with any confidence,” he said.
Demand for energy is so high in places like China that any Canadian natural gas is likely to merely be added to the mix rather displace anything. And, in other countries, it may simply replace natural gas from other countries, he said.
Some environmentalists question the wisdom of replacing coal with gas, given its effects on the climate. Methane, the primary component in natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas. And the processes of turning natural gas into a liquid, transporting it and returning the liquid to gas can leak methane.
ring the pipeline’s construction, the project emerged with a blemished environmental record.
British Columbia’s Environmental Assessment Office has fined Coastal GasLink just under 1.4 million Canadian dollars (about $1 million) since May 2022. Most of the infractions were for improper erosion and sediment control measures.
Several Indigenous communities that support the project have partnerships with LNG Canada, including a joint venture on the tugboat service that guides ships to and from the plant’s docks. But the pipeline’s construction divided one Indigenous community, leading to clashes with the police.
While the pipeline had obtained an agreement with the leadership of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation elected under Canadian law, members of the community who recognize only hereditary leaders opposed having the pipeline on their land and blockaded a construction road in 2021. A judge found the police had made “grossly offensive, racist and dehumanizing” remarks about the Indigenous protesters. Three protesters were convicted of contempt of court in January.
Mr. Carney has pressed ahead to try to remake the economy. He recently moved a bill through Parliament to speed up federal approval of major infrastructure projects and set up a fund to help finance ones that would allow Canada to be less reliant on U.S. trade.
LNG Canada is expected to double the capacity of the Kitimat plant. And there are at least six other natural gas plants in development.
Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times based in Ottawa. He covers politics, culture and the people of Canada and has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at austen@nytimes.com.
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