The slow start is over
LNG Canada took a long time, cost a fortune, and started slow. A year later it is doing the job.
Train 1 loaded the first cargo on June 30, 2025, from the Kitimat plant on Haisla territory. Train 2 began producing in November. The owners are Shell, PETRONAS, PetroChina, Mitsubishi, and KOGAS. Nameplate on Phase 1 is 14 million tonnes a year, with some operators talking 15 if the plant runs clean.
The first months were the usual ramp. Four vessels in December. Then Kpler counts had 10 ships in January and 11 in February. RBC's Michael Harvey said in the spring that the project was nearing a full ramp and that full export capacity means about 15 tankers a month. East Daley, using Vortexa, put utilization around 87 percent by April, nearly 1.6 Bcf per day.
Energy Intelligence's August 14 note is the current one. A year in, LNG Canada is approaching full utilization in time to help fill a global supply gap created by the Middle East conflict. That is the sentence Calgary wanted in 2018. It is late. It is also true.
Why this plant matters more this year than last year
A Pacific cargo from British Columbia does not go through Panama and it does not go through Hormuz. When vessel traffic in the Strait slowed after strikes resumed in July, Asian buyers went looking for barrels of LNG that could actually sail. Kitimat is west-facing by design. The price differential people used to put in slide 14 of every deck, AECO versus Henry Hub and the shorter haul to Tokyo, is no longer a theory.
Globe and Mail reporting earlier this year already had eight ships waiting their turn at the dock as loadings jumped. That is what a working terminal looks like. Not a ribbon. A queue.
At full clip, East Daley figures the plant is taking about 8.4 percent of Canadian marketable gas. That is new demand the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin did not have for forty years of talking about LNG. Coastal GasLink is the pipe that made it possible. The molecules are Montney and Duvernay gas that used to fight for space heading south.
What "full" still does not mean
Full on Phase 1 is not full for Canada. One plant at 1.6 to 1.8 Bcf per day does not reprice a 19 Bcf per day basin. That is the AECO story sitting next to this one.
It also does not make Canada a top-five exporter by itself. Norton Rose's 2026 outlook has the country around 19 million tonnes a year by 2030 on kit that is already sanctioned, and 45 million if this year's final investment decisions actually land. Phase 2 is the swing. Woodfibre and Cedar are the smaller cousins with steel in the ground.
There is M&A noise around the ownership group. PETRONAS and MidOcean. Talk of Shell and Mitsubishi selling down. Read that as people lining up money and partners for the expansion, not as a plant in trouble. The plant is running.
The reporter's close
If you covered this file through the delays, you are allowed a short moment. The thing exists. Ships leave. Asia is buying. The war in the Middle East made a west-coast Canadian cargo more valuable than the original model assumed.
Then you go back to work. Utilization is not the same as a doubled plant. AECO is still soft. Phase 2 is still a decision, not a construction photo. But the first question, can Canada actually export LNG, has an answer now. Yes.