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Pieridae Energy Limited is confident it will announce a partner in a potential
scaled-down East Coast LNG project before the end of the second quarter, CEO
Alfred Sorensen told the company’s year-end 2021 conference call Thursday.
“I think the most important thing that … we were not successful in the first instance was that the project was very large and we needed to have an investment partner. That will be a critical part of our go-forward plan that we will first look for a partner to ensure that project can reach the finish line,” he said.
“[We’ve been] actively involved in that over the last three or four months and we believe we will have an announcement to make before the end of the second quarter on how we will go forward with a partner.
The company originally proposed an onshore LNG plant at Goldboro, Nova Scotia — estimated at a cost of $10 billion — aimed to process 10 million metric tonnes annually. But last June Pieridae cancelled those plans due to rising cost estimates.
The
company said in February that it might now consider a smaller floating LNG facility at Goldboro that could produce roughly two-to-2.5 million metric tonnes annually, or about 400 mmcf/d to be exported to Europe.
This volume depends on the transportation available on the
TC Energy Corporation pipeline network from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB).
“Early in 2022, we became witness to rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine which placed global energy security of supply front and centre. Pieridae’s project could provide potential solutions to help alleviate supply issues, including of a net zero emissions floating LNG facility,” Sorensen said.
“The first step is ensuring Pieridae has an investment partner.”
Sorensen said the Russian invasion of Ukraine has “significantly changed the environment” under which Pieridae sees the potential and feasibility of the project today.
“The Government of Canada has made it very clear that they wish to see Canada play a role in removing Russia from [being a] primary supplier of energy into the European Union and the United Kingdom,” he said.
“We believe that Canada can and should play a major role and we are working very hard now to figure out how we can revitalize our project such that we have an opportunity to be part of the solution as our allies in Western Europe look for alternative supply sources that currently are unavailable and are only being served by Russia,” Sorensen added.
The CEO said that some have accused the company of being opportunists in light of the situation in the Ukraine and the resulting impact on energy supplies on Europe. But that’s not the case, he added.
“We are cognizant that there might be individuals out there, or organizations, that may see us as being an opportunistic company given the situation in the Ukraine today,” he said.
“And my response to that is we’ve always believed that Canada should be a part of the security of supply situation and the unfortunate situation that Ukrainian people find themselves in is not the reason why we feel this is an important project for Canada.”
Federal government needs to step up Sorensen said the company continues to believe that an LNG project at its Goldboro site could be an “economically compelling and nation building opportunity.”
But what Pieridae needs in order to continue development of the project is a commitment of support from the federal government that this initiative is a “national priority.”
“I think in order for the project to go forward at this point in time, the Government of Canada has created the environment to which we are operating in and they’re the only ones that can solve it. And that is the message that we’ve sent to the government consistently: That if they wish to be seen as being helpful in the current situation, what needs to be done is they need to be seen to be resolving some of these issues,” he said.
“We believe we can help resolve those issues by ensuring that First Nations have an equal and fair opportunity to participate in the economic reward of the project. And that is really kind of how we see being able to work with TC Energy to solve some of those issues in regards to some of the antagonism towards pipeline construction in our country,” Sorensen added.