A year ago almost to the day, the Legault government, through the mouth of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Benoit Charette, announced the abandonment of the Énergie Saguenay project of GNL Québec, which proposed to export gas natural from Western Canada to Europe and Asia.
But it should not be believed that the fossil fuel industry and its ally, the Trudeau government, had given up their plans to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) from eastern Canada.
As we learned The duty, well before the invasion of Ukraine, the Trudeau government had signed – it was in March 2021 – an “energy partnership” with Germany to explore the possibilities of LNG exports. Recently, Canada, the fifth largest natural gas producer in the world, set up a working group with the European Union to supply European countries with Canadian LNG, which involves the construction of liquefaction terminals and the use of an existing gas pipeline that crosses southern Quebec, the Trans Quebec & Maritimes (TQM) network, or even the construction of a new pipeline. According to the federal Department of Natural Resources, three LNG terminal projects are being prepared in the east of the country, that of Goldboro in Nova Scotia, Saint-John LNG in New Brunswick and LNG Newfoundland in Newfoundland and Labrador.
It must be said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine completely upset the energy policy of Germany, which believed it had a reliable supplier in its neighbour, the world’s leading exporter of natural gas. The entire German strategy in view in order to meet its commitments to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions was based, initially, on replacing coal, and even nuclear power, with natural gas from, half from Russia. Given the extent of the trade links involved, the Germans had no idea that Russia would have the nerve to jeopardize long-term supply agreements and harm its economic interests to such an extent. Since the war in Ukraine, Germany, but also other European countries, has been trying to get rid of this Russian influence by signing agreements with other suppliers. In March, for example, Germany signed an energy agreement with Qatar for a long-term supply of LNG.
The new geopolitical deal is invigorating the promoters of GNL Québec, who have resumed their lobbying activities with the Trudeau government. Could the current context lead the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE) to consider the Énergie Saguenay project differently? There is reason to doubt it. In March 2021, the BAPE had a first-class burial at this LNG terminal project in the Saguenay Fjord.
What the war in Ukraine has changed—and Germany’s energy collapse—is certainly the commercial possibilities of Énergie Saguenay and the real prospect of signing supply contracts with European countries. At the time of the presentation of GNL Québec before the BAPE, one could certainly doubt the competitiveness of its offer in a mature and well-supplied market like that of Europe and with still hypothetical buyers.
But the main arguments of the BAPE still hold. The construction of such facilities takes time, and the billions invested in such a terminal would be for decades, well beyond even 2040, which is not reconcilable with the objective of carbon neutrality in 2050. What is more, in terms of GHG emissions, the gain to be achieved by replacing coal with natural gas from Western Canada, obtained by fracking and similar to shale gas—this is mainly what we product — is not obvious, had established the BAPE, because of the methane leaks associated with the extraction process. If traditional natural gas is a transitional energy—that’s what Russia exports—it is not the same for this gas resulting from hydraulic fracturing. This is also why the Europeans were not interested in shale gas from the United States.
One might wonder what game the Trudeau government is playing by associating itself with the export of a fossil fuel that does not contribute to improving the balance sheet of GHG emissions on a global level. And what about the social acceptability in Quebec — the BAPE had concluded that there was none — for this frac gas project? This may be another way for Justin Trudeau to say that the opinion of a majority of Quebecers should not count.