Looking to diversify its exports, Quebec willing to rethink natural gas pipeline project

Quebec nixed the project, known as LNG-Québec, in 2021, for environmental reasons. But now, with economic uncertainty surrounding the province’s relationship with the U.S., its largest trading partner, Quebec’s environment minister said the government is interested in taking another look at it.

We’re not opposed to energy products that respect the environmental criteria, Benoit Charette, the environment minister, told reporters at the National Assembly on Wednesday.

Charette cautioned that the project would have to respond to the previous concerns raised by Quebec’s public consultation bureau, the BAPE, which played a role in the project’s refusal.

The Legault government had initially supported the project. It had hoped the project would diversify the economy in the Saguenay area, north of Quebec City, a region largely dependent on the aluminum and forestry industries.

But it had axed it after concluding that the project’s environmental risks outweighed the gains (new window) and that Quebecers didn’t want a pipeline.

The project proposed building a 780-kilometre natural gas pipeline from northern Ontario to Saguenay and a separate project to build a plant to liquefy the gas in Saguenay and load it onto tankers.

Quebec Environment Minister Benoit Charette cautioned that the project would have to respond to the previous concerns raised by Quebec’s public consultation bureau, the BAPE, which played a role in the project’s refusal. ANDRE LAMONTAGNE syl01969 Photo: Radio-Canada / Sylvain Roy Roussel

The BAPE had concluded that the increased tanker traffic along the Saguenay River would pose a risk to vulnerable beluga whale populations and would lead to a spike in greenhouse gas emissions.

If it’s the same project with the same specs, the decision will be the same, Charette said. We recall the decision of the BAPE, we recall the decision of the Ministry of the Environment. If we respond to those concerns today, it’s a project that could be accepted. Projects are studied based on their merits.

Quebec Premier François Legault said Tuesday the province needs to diversify its exports (new window) in the face of U.S. economic hostility.

Speaking at the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal on Tuesday, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly suggested LNG-Québec could play a role in getting Canada’s oil and gas to new markets overseas, like Europe.

We currently have a vulnerability with respect to the United States for our oil and our gas, she said.

Canada has essentially one client. For Alberta oil, 98 per cent of the oil goes to the U.S. but we don’t currently have pipelines that cross Canada to come to Quebec.

Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre has said he would approve LNG-Québec to respond to the threat of American tariffs.

We can sell something 200 per cent or 300 per cent higher in Europe if we export overseas instead of giving all our gas to the Americans and letting them have all the profit. What we’re doing is ridiculous, he told Radio-Canada in January.

‘Questions are still there’ says PQ

Though the Quebec government withdrew its support for the project in 2021, the federal government also refused to approve it in 2022.

Some of Quebec’s provincial political parties reacted with apprehension to the idea of a natural gas pipeline.

Parti Québécois MNA Pascal Paradis said it would have to be up to Quebec to decide if a pipeline was a good idea.

It’s not Mélanie Joly and it’s not the Conservative Party of Canada to decide for Quebecers when it comes to that project, he said.

We had a big debate on that project already and it wasn’t determined that it was in Quebec’s economic interests at the time and there was a problem with social acceptability. Those two questions are still there.

When Quebec announced it was scrapping the project in 2021, Charette had acknowledged that the government’s decision angered people in Western Canada. The project would have provided an additional export market for natural gas from hydraulic fracking operations in British Columbia and Alberta.

This article is republished from RCI.