May 27, 2022
A small delegation from Industry, Tourism and Investment (ITI) participated at the Canada Gas & LNG Exhibition and Conference in Vancouver on May 10-12 to showcase the NWT’s world-class reserves of natural gas and highlight potential opportunities for exporting liquified natural gas (LNG) to international markets. The event took place as many countries are using LNG as a cleaner option to transition away from fuels such as coal and diesel.
The NWT has huge natural gas reserves in the Liard, Sahtu, and in the Beaufort Delta regions. While any major gas and LNG development in the NWT is still a ways off, the Vancouver event brought together the full value chain from producers, pipeline players and LNG projects, through to transportation companies, petrochemical players and power producers from Canada and the rest of the world. Building industry relationships domestically and internationally provides an opportunity to present the NWT and Canada as a potentially cleaner, safer, and more culturally sensitive supplier of LNG to growing global markets.
In the meantime, closer to home, there is a smaller scale LNG project being proposed by the Inuvialuit Petroleum Corporation, a subsidiary of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation (IRC). The project would develop an existing natural gas well in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region and is called the Inuvialuit Energy Security Project. It involves construction of a gas plant that will convert natural gas into LNG and synthetic diesel, which can then be transported to customers throughout the region for power and heating applications. If it advances to construction and production, it will enhance energy security and lower greenhouse gas emissions by reducing reliance on imported diesel.