A Cheniere executive said the company's recent supply deal with a Montney shale producer in Canada was driven by delays in developing liquefied natural gas facilities on the West Coast of North America.
"I think it's got 100% to do with it," Corey Grindal, Cheniere's vice president of Gas Supply, told Upstream when asked if the delays were behind the deal.
"You've got this massive resource base that is larger than the Marcellus and Utica that is sitting in Western Canada, and someone had enough ingenuity to go get the right pipeline capacity, get that gas out of the ground, out of the country, and we and others can pick it up."
The agreement calls for the unnamed producer to ship gas via pipeline from western Canada to Cheniere's Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana for liquefaction and export.
Grindal was tight-lipped on details of the deal, which he said was for a term longer than a year but shorter than a term of 10 years.
"It's real physical gas, moving through the pipeline grid and moving through the terminal to LNG. It's not a financial swap, it's not some crazy deal," he said.
Grindal added that the company would entertain more such agreements from Canadian producers "to the extent that it's economical for us to do so".
While US Gulf Coast LNG projects have progressed and Cheniere began exporting from Sabine Pass last year, West Coast projects have been slower to develop.
Veresen's application to build an LNG facility in Oregon was rejected by federal regulators last year, but the company plans to re-apply later in 2017.
Petronas' proposed Pacific Northwest LNG facility in British Columbia has been held up by a dispute with First Nations groups. While the project has received federal approval to begin construction, it has yet to reach a final investment decision.
