Operator Chevron Corporation recently put the brakes on the Kitimat project which it shares 50-50 with Woodside, announcing last month it had cut capital spending on planning, engineering and early site preparation work as the LNG glut appeared to be worsening.
Anadarko Petroleum recently finalised two key marine concessions with Mozambique's government paving the way for sanctioning on a proposed 12 million tonne per annum project.
Meanwhile Eagle LNG just got approval this week to ship 2.8 billion cubic feet of LNG to free trade agreement and non-FTA countries from Florida from next month, with commissioning now underway.
Yet Bloomberg New Energy Finance's APAC chief Ashish Sethia appeared to flag good news this week by saying LNG demand was growing at the fastest this year since 2011 led by China, whose economic growth is returning and is importing more natural gas to cut pollution.
Other emerging economies like Pakistan, Jordan and Latin America are also opening up new LNG import markets, while Japan is trying to revive its nuclear energy and boost renewables so LNG demand is expected to slow.
Overall the share of LNG demand from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will decline out to 2030 and BNEF forecasts China to surge ahead of South Korea by 2019 and by 2025 will likely become the biggest LNG importer ahead of Japan, with India and Southeast Asia also growing.
While LNG exports are essential to the current Trump administration's energy policy, Sethia says the challenges are not regulatory but economic.
"Before they decide to build them, they need to find long-term buyers as non-US suppliers are selling LNG on oil indexation, and oil is still relatively cheap," he said this week.
"So it's tough for US LNG suppliers to compete."
Morgans Financial senior resources analyst Adrian Prendergast told Energy News that for some of the greenfields projects in British Columbia where reasonable high capital intensity assets have been deferred or scrapped, which shows the greater scrutiny they're coming under to be justified.
Petronas recently canned its $36 billion Pacific NorthWest project and last week CNOOC and Inpex did the same to their Aurora LNG proposal which was to be anchored at Grassy Point, where Woodside is also planning yet an onshore LNG facility and a near-shore LNG facility.
"We're in an environment where the spot market is moving into a short-term surplus over the next 2-3 years, and in the longer term we still have a deficit outlook for supply, with new lower-cost sources of supply coming on like Qatar extending their production," Prendergast said.
"So if you're caught with a reasonably large, high capital intensity project [like Kitimat] that faces significant regulatory or environmental hurdles but [even with] with reasonable margins, it may not be enough to press ahead with those sorts of greenfield projects."
Chevron putting the brakes on Kitimat reinforced his firm's view that while the Kitimat project excels in terms of reservoir quality, it has struggled in terms of economics under the current price environment.
"The read-through from current project deferrals is that it does pose a comparable risk to what's happening at Kitimat," Prendergast said.
The proposed Kitimat project's downstream infrastructure will have initial capacity of up to 10MMtpa, with a 480km Pacific Trail Pipeline yet to be built, with upstream resources in the Liard and Horn River basins covering about 600,000 acres.
