With its unsettled aboriginal title issues and sometimes sclerotic regulatory process, B.C. has been described as a place where it’s hard to get anything built.

But the largest single private sector investment in Canadian history, the $17 billion LNG Canada project ($40 billion, when upstream assets and the associated Coastal GasLink pipeline are included), continues to rise from the ground in Kitimat and is past the 50% completion stage.

The project is a testament to the fact things can get built in B.C., so long as the proponent has deep pockets, has ticked all the environmental and social licence boxes and has the support of First Nations.

“We had an extremely busy year in 2021,” LNG Canada CEO Peter Zebedee said in a fireside chat today, along with Haisla First Nation Chief Crystal Smith, at the final day of the three-day BC Natural Resources Forum. “We were able to reach some really key milestones.”

Roughly 4,000 people were employed in 2021 at the Kitimat site. Zebedee said this year will be even busier.

“This is going to be the most intensive period of time for construction on the project,” Zebedee said. “We call it our year of going into high gear. We’re really going to be accelerating our pace of project completion and construction.

“We’ve got thousands of Canadians right now working on the project site. Most of them are from B.C. and includes many folks from the Haisla Nation and from the indigenous communities around the project.”

He added the company has spent $3.5 billion on contracts and procurement in B.C., of which $2.6 billion of which was awarded to First Nations and local area businesses.

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