LNG Canada Development Inc. has produced its first batch of liquefied natural gas at its Kitimat facility in northwestern B.C., the company has confirmed.
The facility also remains on track to load its first cargo shipments this year, spokesman Brian Hutchinson said in an email Monday.
He did not provide further information regarding when exactly the first batch of production took place over the weekend and how much LNG was produced.
The company announced this past Friday that “intermittent, significant” flaring would continue throughout the weekend as part of ongoing commissioning and start-up activities.
Flaring is the controlled combustion of natural gas with a visible flame as a safety measure.
The current flare is at the minimum required to safely support a plant start-up, said the announcement.
Reuters reported Sunday the plant began producing LNG that day at 4 a.m., according to two people familiar with the launch.
The gas is being liquefied at the facility’s Train 1, which has an export capacity of 5.6 million tonnes of LNG per year, said the Reuters story. This is one of two processing facilities at the site, with the potential to expand to four in the future.
The facility’s Phase 1 will export 13 million tonnes of LNG per year. A Phase 2 expansion is pending, and could double the facility’s capacity to 26 million tonnes of LNG per year.
LNG Canada is a five-partner joint venture between Shell Canada Energy (40 per cent ownership), Petronas Energy Canada Ltd. (25 per cent) and PetroChina Canada Ltd. (15 per cent), among others.
The Kitimat facility—Canada’s first LNG project of this magnitude—had its final investment decision in 2018 on Phase 1 of the project, and took about six years to build.
LNG Canada represents a total investment of $40 billion, including the $18 billion Kitimat LNG plant and the $14.5 billion Coastal GasLink Pipeline operated by TC Energy Corp. (TSX:TRP-T) that runs 670 kilometres from Dawson Creek to Kitimat.
The first LNG carrier ship arrived for equipment testing in April.
