Canada

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated again that Canada would be willing to consider easing burdensome red tape on new gas export facilities to Europe, though he acknowledged that financing LNG export ventures in Eastern Canada could prove difficult. Speaking at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Trudeau said there is no easy solution to the difficulty of supplying LNG export terminals on Canada’s Atlantic coast with gas sourced thousands of miles away in Western Canada. Canada will “explore ways to see if it makes sense to export LNG, and if there’s a business case for it to export LNG directly to Europe,” Trudeau said. Calgary-based Pieridae Energy, developer of the proposed 10 million ton/yr Goldboro LNG export project in Nova Scotia, reported progress in 2018 in garnering US$1.5 billion in "untied" German federal government loan guarantees to help finance upstream activities within the project. This was in addition to a similar confirmation of eligibility for up to US$3 billion in German financing for construction of Goldboro LNG's first liquefaction train. Earlier this month, Spain's Repsol confirmed that it was in discussions about exporting gas to Europe from its Saint John LNG terminal in eastern Canada, which currently operates as a regasification facility.