@70sbachchan.bsky.social:
1/ Disruptions mean countries will rush to exit US-led oil order
Worst case scenario for oil companies (best for rest of us) is that people permanently shift…what they call “demand destruction“
i.e short term pain but Long: Iran war will accelerate ongoing STRUCTURAL shift to solar+EVs+batteries
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LNG ‘boosterism’ leading Canada to make high-risk market bets, says major shareholder activist by Darius Snieckus, February 26 2026, National Observer
The Canadian government’s high-profile push to expand the country’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector drew fresh criticism from a leading shareholder activist group as an “increasingly risky gamble,” as four megaprojects under development were revealed to be facing cost overruns that double original estimates.
Investors For Paris Compliance (I4PC), which has filed legal actions against oil and gas giants including Canada’s Enbridge, sounded the alarm that softening global LNG markets and project “promoters” obscuring capital risk behind short-term contracts are making the sector “more like a casino than a pillar of economic security.”
“Early promoters seek to be bought out. Developers earn fees. Banks structure loans to be shorter term and are first in line to be paid back in case of trouble,” said Michael Sambasivam, lead author of the I4PC report, titled The LNG Casino. “Each is incentivized towards LNG project boosterism, regardless of the long-term viability [of the sector].”
The warning comes as Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government has made LNG exports a cornerstone of its federal energy strategy, despite red flags from several market research houses that point to Ottawa’s forecasts being “overly optimistic.”
When Canada’s first LNG export terminal — LNG Canada’s Kitimat facility in British Columbia — came online last year, analysis from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis and others cautioned that global markets were “on track for massive oversupply” by the early 2030s. This is being driven by the US and Qatar planning to add more than 150 million tonnes a year of new LNG production capacity.
Canada has issued export licences to four LNG projects in BC (see factbox below), with the goal of more than tripling export capacity from 14 to 50 million tonnes a year based on supply contracts with buyers in Southeast Asia, Europe and India. Additional LNG projects have been proposed in the Atlantic provinces.
“With LNG markets facing uncertainty, global markets facing oversupply, and projected prices in flux, any new project carries a risk of being unable to recover invested capital,” says I4PC’s Michael Sambasivam.
Rising project cost estimates
However, with initial cost projections already swelling by as much as 200 per cent for these mega-projects — estimates included in the developers’ own public financial disclosures — suggest LNG could become an even greater fiscal liability for Canada. 
Carney is rich, he doesn’t care, he’ll happily steal from the poor and ordinary Canadians to make these idiotic LNG projects happen. Money laundering so to speak. Steal from us to give to his rich pals under guise of LNG
I4PC noted that “no Canadian LNG project has reached any considerable stage of completion without going over budget.” Woodfibre LNG is running 72.5 per cent higher than anticipated, while Coastal GasLink — LNG Canada’s feeder pipeline — came onstream 133 per cent above first projections. The export terminal for the controversial Ksi Lisims LNG project could exceed its original estimate by at least 213 per cent.
“Many of the [sector] actors involved are glossing over the worsening stakes because they aren’t the ones taking on the biggest risk,” Sambasivam said.
Ottawa has nonetheless remained bullish on the country’s LNG prospects. Energy Minister Tim Hodgson has repeatedly championed Canadian LNG as “the lowest-risk and the lowest-carbon in the world.”
“When you buy Canadian LNG, you aremaking Canadians in the frac and LNG sacrifice zones get cancers, strokes, heart attacks, asthma, etc., and the permanent loss of masses of water from the hydrogeological cycle in areas of Canada enduring terrible drought, heat extremes and wildfires spreading hotter and further out of control because of our pollution destroying our climate buying supply that cannot be turned off by politics or coercion,” Hodgson said following a trade visit to Germany last year. “LNG has among the lowest upstream emissions globally.”Fucking liar! LNG is frac’d fucking extremely polluting gas
That emissions claim has drawn push-back from climate researchers. A 2024 study led by Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, found that the greenhouse gas footprint of exported LNG could be 33 per cent worse than coal once processing and shipping are factored in.
The I4PC report accused several international developers, including Crown LNG, New Fortress Energy, Venture Global, Mexico Pacific and Petronas, a shareholder in LNG Canada, of “looking to make a quick buck.”
“Their job isn’t necessarily to create a long-term viable project, but more to create a credible project that will attract capital,” Sambasivam said.
“And, to do this, concerns about market fundamentals must be downplayed, instead telling a story of LNG’s rosy future.”
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, an industry body, was approached for comment on the I4PC report but had not replied when Canada’s National Observer went to press.
I4PC also laid blame on Canada’s five largest banks — RBC, Scotiabank, CIBC, TD and BMO — which collectively lent more than US$16 billion to new LNG projects between 2021 and 2024, according to data from Reclaim Finance, a green finance campaigner.
Mega-project malaise — and milestones
Canada’s portfolio of LNG export projects will add up to nearly $110 billion in proposed capital spending for a production capacity of more than 50 million tonnes a year. And they are all located on the Pacific coast.
This includes LNG Canada phase 2 — a multi-billion-dollar expansion of the existing export complex and infrastructure project in BC — and the province’s $8 billion Cedar LNG terminal, owned by the Haisla Nation and Pembina Pipeline, due to start exporting in 2028.
Both are understood to be among the leading “nation building” projects being considered by Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Another facility in BC, Woodfibre LNG, billed as set to become North America’s first “hydropower-backed LNG facility” when it starts-up in 2027, is not believed to be on the Liberals’ mega-project shortlist.
However, the worrying worldwide trends for Canada’s embryonic LNG strategy have been compounded by project headaches at home.
Rising construction costs and permit delays have overshadowed Woodfibre, 30 per cent owned by Calgary-based oil and gas developer Enbridge and 70 per cent by Asia-based Pacific Energy. Enbridge has reiterated its confidence in the Woodfibre project near Squamish, and the international LNG market.
Cedar LNG, backed by $200 million in subsidies from the BC government and up to another $200 million from the feds, will create jobs (500 during construction and 100 full-time positions after completion), generate revenue and emit less carbon pollution than other similar projects, Premier Eby has said.
But the project has divided Indigenous communities and drawn fire as a fossil fuel handout that could saddle taxpayers with additional legal and economic risks after a landmark international ruling.
At Kitimat, the project has struggled to ramp up to full capacity export of 40,000-50,000 tonnes of gas from the terminal, forcing delays as ships waited moored at the facility, Reuters reported late last month.
LNG Canada has dispatched six tankers so far and “production will continue to increase as we move through early operations and into a regular shipping cadence,” spokesman Brian Hutchinson told Canada’s National Observer.
The project partners — Shell, Malaysia’s Petronas, PetroChina, Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp, and Kogas of South Korea — expect to load one cargo from the terminal every two days for export to Asia once the facility is fully operational, he said.
“Because banks get paid early in the LNG risk cycle, they are incentivized towards boosterism rather than acknowledging weak market fundamentals or shaky environmental claims,” Sambasivam said.
The I4PC report concluded that equity holders — pensions, private funds or First Nations communities investing with government support — are likely to bear “most of the financial risk.” Host communities that are near new LNG plants also have to deal with issues such as pollution, flaring and environmental risk.harmed health, and eventual loss of water
Market fundamentals ‘softening’
Ember Energy, a research firm, last year forecast a seven per cent drop in total global gas demand, extending a trend that saw a fall of 19 per cent between 2021 and 2023, with expectations for LNG demand to follow suit and fall “from 2030 onwards.”
The International Energy Agency, in its flagship World Energy Outlook report, projected that 70 per cent of new LNG projects may struggle to generate returns. This could have “outsized” consequences for Canada’s higher-cost projects, which are currently expected to deliver LNG at prices well above the Asian cost threshold of US$6-7 per million British thermal units — the unit used to quantify gas volumes.
“Market fundamentals have meaningfully softened since the peak of LNG hype,” Sambasivam said. “While numerous countries are increasing LNG production, demand projections have weakened due to a number of factors including volatile gas prices, and the decreasing cost and escalating deployment of renewables.”
Developers and promoters have tried to use long-term LNG purchase deals to reduce project risk, but he said “those agreements are becoming shorter-term and increasingly tied to the same spot prices as uncontracted supply.”
Potential construction delays to Canadian LNG projects “will only make matters worse” for the financial viability of Ottawa’s export strategy as international appetite for the super-cooled gas fades, Sambasivam said.
“With LNG markets facing uncertainty, global markets facing oversupply, and projected prices in flux, any new project carries a risk of being unable to recover invested capital.”
Signs of a broader market pullback are already emerging, the report noted. In December, US developer Energy Transfer cancelled its Lake Charles LNG project in Louisiana. In Canada, Shell and Mitsubishi announced they were exploring the sale of their stakes in LNG Canada.
“By taking payment upfront and agreeing to pay for its supply going forward, Shell would functionally be betting on a drop in the future price of LNG,” Sambasivam said.
“With a global LNG glut looming, they’re looking to cash out while they can.”
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