The next plants are not a press release
LNG Canada is the headline. The second wave is already in the ground.
Cedar LNG, majority owned by the Haisla Nation with Pembina Pipeline, is a floating liquefaction project at Kitimat. Construction started in 2024. First LNG is scheduled for late 2028. The production unit is being built in South Korea. B.C.'s Environmental Assessment Office has now authorized 3.75 million tonnes a year, up from 3.0. That is a 25 percent lift, about 500 million cubic feet a day of feedgas instead of 400.
The Globe and Mail reported the July 9 decision. The regulator flagged cumulative air quality in the Kitimat airshed. That is the cost of stacking Cedar next to LNG Canada and, if Phase 2 goes, next to two more trains. The same Coastal GasLink line will feed both plants. More tonnes at Cedar is more competition for pipe space and more of a Kitimat story, not a new geography.
Cedar is the first Indigenous majority-owned LNG project in the world. That is not a slogan you bury in paragraph eight. It is the ownership. Capacity that Pembina had held was contracted in late 2025, 1.0 million tonnes to PETRONAS and 0.5 to Ovintiv, on top of ARC Resources' 1.5. The commercial book is filling while the hull is still in a Korean yard.
Woodfibre is the other clock
Woodfibre LNG sits on an industrial site near Squamish, water-access only, powered by BC Hydro. Owners are Pacific Energy (70 percent) and Enbridge (30 percent). Nameplate is 2.1 million tonnes a year. Norton Rose had construction near 60 percent complete, with substantial completion expected in 2027. Electric compressors, hydro power, a smaller footprint than Kitimat. Different project, same west-coast idea.
If Woodfibre finishes in late 2027 and Cedar in late 2028, Canada has three LNG terminals loading for Asia by early 2029 even if Phase 2 is still a hole in the ground. That is the sanctioned path Norton Rose puts near 19 million tonnes a year by 2030. It is not the 45 million tonne dream board. It is enough to matter.
What this does to Western Canadian gas
Phase 1 at LNG Canada is already taking something like 1.6 Bcf per day. Woodfibre and Cedar together are a bit over 0.7 Bcf per day of additional feed if they run at the new Cedar number. That is not Phase 2. It is also not nothing. It is more Montney gas that does not have to fight for Chicago.
Morningstar still thinks production growth outruns this increment for the next few years. They are probably right in 2026 and 2027. By 2029 the picture is different if all three docks are loading. Associated gas will still show up. The question is whether the Pacific door is finally big enough that AECO stops being the residual.
Watch the airshed and the pipe. Kitimat cannot add infinite trains without a fight. Coastal GasLink cannot take infinite new nominations without the Phase 2 commercial deal holding. Those are the constraints that will decide whether "three terminals by 2029" is a price event or just a nice map.
How to write it without the brochure
Do not say Canada is poised. Say Cedar got a bigger permit, Woodfibre is more than half built, and Kitimat is already exporting. Say the Haisla are in both the Cedar ownership and the LNG Canada neighbourhood. Say 2027 and 2028 are the dates that matter if Phase 2 slips. That is the second-wave story. Steel, permits, and a pipe. Not a vision document.