Combine the end of a market glut of LNG with the approaching BC Government November 30 deadline to claim as much as $6 billion in tax breaks for the Kitimat LNG project and what do you get? A flurry of activity in Kitimat around the CA $40 billion LNG terminal.
According to Bloomberg, “The action is unmistakable in Kitimat, British Columbia, the Pacific coast city hugging a deep inlet that would be the closest launch point on the continent for LNG cargoes to Asia. The lights are on, shades open and SUVs parked outside a 49-unit apartment complex built to house Shell executives, which sat mostly darkened for the last two years. Local workers have left jobs at a Rio Tinto Plc smelter nearby to join contractors ramping up for the LNG project. Landlords are raising rents and houses are selling twice as fast as they used to in anticipation of a flood of workers coming to town.
“I would put money on it — it’s going ahead,” says Phil Germuth, mayor of Kitimat, who recently hosted a banker from Barclays Bank Plc visiting from the U.K. to examine the project. Germuth also met a group of officials reporting to the board of Mitsubishi Corp., one of the project’s five partners, who visited the site in May.”
Read the full article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-09/canada-s-30-billion-lng-hope-edges-closer-as-shell-ramps-up
