The first Canadian liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports may have to settle for boarding tankers at a new port on the U.S. West Coast, a champion of British Columbia (BC) projects conceded last week.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) Vice Chairman Jim Prentice, a former Canadian Conservative cabinet minister, raised the prospect of a partial U.S. victory in the race to Asia at a well-attended meeting staged in Calgary by the British DMG business conference group. Prentice told the executive crowd that industry, as well as federal, provincial and Aboriginal authorities involved in the BC projects need to understand that U.S. competition to break into the global LNG trade is vigorous.

As likely candidates to beat the BC pack of terminal and pipeline schemes Prentice pointed to two Oregon projects: Jordan Cove and Oregon LNG (see NGI, May 20). Both have cleared the highest U.S. regulatory hurdle by completing the years-long process of obtaining licenses from the U.S. Department of Energy for exports to markets beyond areas covered by free-trade agreements.

Veresen Inc. earlier this month filed an application with Canada’s National Energy Board for a 25-year license to export up to 1.55 Bcf/d, or 9 million metric tons a year, from Canada to the United States initially to supply the proposed Jordan Cove export project at Coos Bay, OR (see NGI, Sept. 16; May 27). Canada gas would reach the Jordan Cove terminal via existing pipeline and gathering networks to the Malin trading hub in southern Oregon and then be transported through the Pacific Connector, a 232-mile, 36-inch proposed pipeline owned equally by Veresen and Williams.

The next step, approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, will be arduous but brisker, consultants involved in the projects said in interviews, including Jordan Cove participant and Navigant director Gordon Pickering, and Colin Coe, who is working with Oregon LNG. Coe and others have said to expect FERC approval to take at least a year and up to 18 months. After permits are awarded, construction would take another 40-45 months, enabling an Oregon terminal to be loading the first LNG tankers in late 2018 or early 2019.

Pickering and Coe agreed with Prentice that shipping out gas originating in BC and Alberta as Asia-bound LNG from Oregon is a realistic option.

The U.S. Pacific Northwest — unlike proposed terminal sites on the northern BC coast at Kitimat and Prince Rupert — has access to abundant Canadian gas off long-standing export conduits in the pipeline networks of TransCanada Corp. and Spectra Energy, the consultants said.

Aspiring U.S. exporters also appear to have more realistic expectations for prices and benefits than Canadians, Prentice added. He called for adopting a more flexible stance than the revenue hunger built into the BC Liberal government’s official forecast that royalties and taxes from LNG exports would fill a C$100 billion provincial “prosperity fund” within three decades.

Adapting to international markets, as opposed to traveling in well-worn export grooves to the United States, is still a novelty for Canadians, said Birchcliff Energy President Jeff Tonken, whose firm specializes in developing low-cost shale production in northern Alberta and BC and is a supplier for a Kitimat entry in the Canadian LNG terminal lineup.

Tonken broke ranks with his peers to praise President Obama for shocking the Canadian gas and oil industry out of complacency, as an unintended side effect of Democrat’s energy policy. The best thing that happened to Canadians lately has been the Obama administration’s refusal to grant swift approval to TransCanada’s Keystone XL proposal for an express pipeline from the Alberta oilsands to Gulf of Mexico refineries, he said.

“That woke us up. I thank him [Obama] for not letting that pipeline go,” Tonken said.

The parallel talk in Washington about ending generations of U.S. reliance on imports to top up U.S. gas markets provides similar stimulation for Canadian business imagination, he said. “It would be great if we moved all our gas west [to Pacific Coast LNG terminals and Asia], and the U.S. can become self-sufficient.”