Shell plans Liquid Natural Gas terminal on Lake Huron

By Brent Patterson, Tuesday, March 5th, 2013

The Globe and Mail reports that Royal Dutch Shell has unveiled plans to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Sarnia, Ontario and then ship that gas on freighters on the Great Lakes. The LNG terminal in Sarnia would be completed by 2016.

“Sarnia is an important refuelling hub on the Great Lakes, where some 65 U.S.-flagged and 80 Canadian-flagged ships regularly do business. Most of the U.S. vessels are too big to move through the St. Lawrence Seaway, meaning they are essentially a captive fleet on the lakes – an ideal place for Shell to offer a new type of fuel. …The St. Lawrence Seaway has never seen an LNG-fuelled ship. But seaway management said there is no reason it can’t happen.”

Shell is also planning a LNG terminal Calgary, Alberta and in Geismar, Louisiana. “The three plants each have a planned capacity of 250,000 tonnes per year. They are far smaller than the 12-million tonne LNG export plant that Shell and several partners have proposed for the Canadian West Coast. But they will produce 1.5 million litres of LNG per day, enough to fuel 5,000 trucks or a good percentage of the Great Lakes fleet where, depending on size, ships consume between 7,500 and 38,000 litres daily.”

On April 4, Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow will begin a 7-city tour in defense of the Great Lakes, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=19278. In May 2012, during the first part of this Great Lakes tour, she spoke in Sarnia and visited the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=15423.