Development Of British Columbia’s Natural Gas Resources Via Lng

Abstract

In Northeast British Columbia, new shale formations with up to 2,000 TCF of gas-in-place have been identified. This discovery has brought British Columbia’s total supply of natural gas to approximately 3,000 TCF. Although the government of British Columbia is interested in the development of these natural gas resources via LNG, the liquefaction phase of the LNG process has the capacity to consume a large amount of energy and produce a large amount of CO2e emissions. This report uses information attained from newspaper articles, academic journals and company websites to analyze the CO2 production rates of operational LNG facilities across the globe to determine whether a combined use hydroelectricity and modern aero derivative turbine technology would help to satisfy the GHG intensity limit of 0.16 t CO2e/ t LNG defined in British Columbia’s Greenhouse Gas Industrial and Control Act. This research also sought to determine the megatonnes per annum of LNG production that British Columbia’s hydroelectric grid and modern aero derivative turbine technology can support in the framework of the GHG intensity limit defined.