Vancouver is Awesome Article: Delta LNG plant fits in new energy framework: FortisBC

Of the five liquefied natural gas projects in B.C. that are either under construction or in the environmental review process, two will need to pass a new provincial sniff test for greenhouse gas intensity.

One of them is FortisBC’s Tilbury Island LNG plant expansion in Delta, which is still working its way through the BC Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) review process. The other is the much larger Ksi Lisims project in Prince Rupert.

With a capital cost of $3 to $3.5 billion, the Tilbury Island expansion project is one of the largest capital projects on the major projects inventory for the Lower Mainland.

Should the project be approved, the expansion could bring the plant’s total production capacity up from 250,000 tonnes annually (current) to 3.4 million tonnes – a twelve-fold increase that would make it larger, in terms of production capacity, than the Woodfibre LNG project in Squamish (2.1 million tonnes) or Cedar LNG project in Kitimat (3 million tonnes).

The Tilbury Island LNG project is different from all others in B.C. in two respects. For one, it is an expansion of an existing LNG plant, not a greenfield project. Secondly, the LNG it would produce would not be solely, or even primarily, for export. Its main market would be domestic, including marine fuel bunkering and fueling trucks that run on compressed natural gas or LNG.

“The export piece is interesting, but it’s really not the core part of our story,” said Andrew Hamilton, FortisBC’s senior project manager for Tilbury Island. “There’s no firm contract for export. It’s an opportunity – we’re interested in it. But we are very, very closely watching the marine fuelling, the marine bunkering market, because that demand continues to grow.”

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