Commercial support may emerge for a plan to revive a mining ghost town in northern British Columbia (BC) as another entry in the lineup of projects for exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Canada’s Pacific coast, says the idea’s sponsor.

After eight months of fishing for industry support, Kitsault Energy announced Monday that it has a nibble in the form of a memorandum of understanding with an overseas enterprise willing to explore possibilities of the scheme.

The identity of the tentative partner and the size of its potential share were not disclosed, apart from a statement that “an Asian oil and gas major” is interested. More partners will be sought, added the aspiring LNG export firm.

Kitsault, named after its early aboriginal inhabitants, is an historic silver and molybdenum mining hot spot at the head of a Pacific fiord, 35 (22 miles) kilometers from the southern border of the Alaska Panhandle and 850 kilometers (530 miles) north of Vancouver. Production ceased in 1982.

Attempts to revive the 350-acre site have been under way since 2005, when it was bought for a reported C$5.7 million by an entrepreneur from India, Krishnan Suthanthiran, a Canadian citizen and founder of a health care supplies firm based in Springfield, VA, called Best Medical International.

Until he announced the LNG plan and said he was trawling for industry partners at a business conference in Ottawa last winter, work on reviving the mining ghost town concentrated on another imaginative proposal for an ecotourism resort and conference center named after his mother: Chandra Krishnan Kitsault, which means heaven on earth.

His LNG idea calls for a northern BC coast energy megaport to be built in stages, with investment eventually reaching up to C$30 billion in floating and land-based processing and terminal facilities plus an array of associated facilities. The tentative schedule calls for initial output as early as 2017. No regulatory applications have been filed yet with Canadian federal or provincial authorities.