Feds are going to need to drop a ton of money on this project if they want to meet that timeline.
Just the road from Gilliam to Churchill will cost an ungodly amount of money, and that’s just part of the infrastructure needed for this project
AlbertaGengar on
I hope by rail car and not by pipeline. Upgrade the rail infrastructure so we can maximise public investment and support all industries.
pintord on
Waste of time and money, If solar and battery storage continue their current price drops, Fossil gas demand will be half of what it is today by 2030. “locked-in” gas infrastructure risks becoming a stranded asset before the first ship even clears Hudson Bay.
A pipeline from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (Alberta/Saskatchewan) to Churchill would cover roughly 1,600 km. Building over the discontinuous permafrost of the Hudson Bay Lowlands requires specialized elevated or insulated designs to prevent the “heat” of the friction-heated gas from melting the ground and causing pipe buckling. That’s $40B.
Liquefaction plant $15B, A modest LNG terminal requires anywhere from 50 MW to 200 MW of constant power. That’s another $1.5B. Churchill’s population is roughly 900 people. A project of this scale would require a construction peak of 3,000 to 5,000 workers, followed by a permanent operations staff of 200–400. That’s another $500M. From an LCOE perspective, these “ancillary” costs are the silent killers. If you have to spend $2 billion on power and housing before you even buy a single compressor for the LNG plant, your “break-even” price for a million BTU of gas goes through the roof.
Estimates for a “mid-sized” export facility (roughly 10 million tonnes of LNG per year) suggest a lifecycle footprint of roughly 30 to 40 million tonnes of CO_2 equivalent per year. Over 20 years that’s another $260B in social cost of carbon.
Even without the social cost of carbon, Europe would essentially have to pay a 30% to 50% “Sovereignty Premium” to choose Churchill over cheaper, existing alternatives in the US or Middle East.
Wellsy on
That terminal will provide energy security for Europe. Build it. The Europeans need to extend a security umbrella to Canada (in addition to the Americans). We can’t have too many friends.
HistoricalSand2505 on
So how much would a natural gas pipeline cost to the east cost vs the port of Churchill upgrades and icebreakers?
mukmuk64 on
The article really lays out how weak of an idea this is. Staggering effort and costs to build out a huge amount of infrastructure, specially done to accomodate the weather, all for a port that will be closed for most of the year.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that this would be done at a river delta critical to endangered animals. Good grief.
The delusional thing about this is engaging in this at the moment when the world is embracing new energy vehicles, heating and renewables in a way that will limit demand for this particular export product.
It’s a hell of a lot cheaper to export LNG off the west coast. Just focus there.
6 Comments
Feds are going to need to drop a ton of money on this project if they want to meet that timeline.
Just the road from Gilliam to Churchill will cost an ungodly amount of money, and that’s just part of the infrastructure needed for this project
I hope by rail car and not by pipeline. Upgrade the rail infrastructure so we can maximise public investment and support all industries.
Waste of time and money, If solar and battery storage continue their current price drops, Fossil gas demand will be half of what it is today by 2030. “locked-in” gas infrastructure risks becoming a stranded asset before the first ship even clears Hudson Bay.
A pipeline from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (Alberta/Saskatchewan) to Churchill would cover roughly 1,600 km. Building over the discontinuous permafrost of the Hudson Bay Lowlands requires specialized elevated or insulated designs to prevent the “heat” of the friction-heated gas from melting the ground and causing pipe buckling. That’s $40B.
Liquefaction plant $15B, A modest LNG terminal requires anywhere from 50 MW to 200 MW of constant power. That’s another $1.5B. Churchill’s population is roughly 900 people. A project of this scale would require a construction peak of 3,000 to 5,000 workers, followed by a permanent operations staff of 200–400. That’s another $500M. From an LCOE perspective, these “ancillary” costs are the silent killers. If you have to spend $2 billion on power and housing before you even buy a single compressor for the LNG plant, your “break-even” price for a million BTU of gas goes through the roof.
Estimates for a “mid-sized” export facility (roughly 10 million tonnes of LNG per year) suggest a lifecycle footprint of roughly 30 to 40 million tonnes of CO_2 equivalent per year. Over 20 years that’s another $260B in social cost of carbon.
Even without the social cost of carbon, Europe would essentially have to pay a 30% to 50% “Sovereignty Premium” to choose Churchill over cheaper, existing alternatives in the US or Middle East.
That terminal will provide energy security for Europe. Build it. The Europeans need to extend a security umbrella to Canada (in addition to the Americans). We can’t have too many friends.
So how much would a natural gas pipeline cost to the east cost vs the port of Churchill upgrades and icebreakers?
The article really lays out how weak of an idea this is. Staggering effort and costs to build out a huge amount of infrastructure, specially done to accomodate the weather, all for a port that will be closed for most of the year.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that this would be done at a river delta critical to endangered animals. Good grief.
The delusional thing about this is engaging in this at the moment when the world is embracing new energy vehicles, heating and renewables in a way that will limit demand for this particular export product.
It’s a hell of a lot cheaper to export LNG off the west coast. Just focus there.