Canada wants to expand its LNG business. Critics raise red flags

Murky history

Several of the companies involved in the two projects, either directly or through financing agreements, have murky histories and troubling portfolios. Domestic costs also include accusations of environmental pollution and potential human rights violations.

Since commissioning began in early 2025, a technical problem at the newly built LNG Canada facility led to the plant burning off more than 350 million cubic metres of gas that year, putting it among the world’s highest sources of flaring emissions.

The local community was unaware of the scale or nature of the issue until reporting by the Canadian environmental news outlet The Narwhal revealed the plant had started operations despite identifying an “integrity issue” with its equipment.

LNG Canada is owned by a consortium of five foreign companies: Shell, Petronas, Korea Gas, PetroChina and Mitsubishi. Shell is the majority shareholder.

Like TotalEnergies, Shell signed a deal to purchase two million tonnes of LNG from Ksi Lisims in 2024. The corporation recently bought Arc Resources, a Canadian oil and gas company with assets in northeast British Columbia and Alberta.

Shell’s oil and gas operations in Nigeria are among its more notorious. The United Nations estimates Shell spilled more than 13 million barrels of crude oil in at least 7,000 incidents in the Niger Delta since it started operations there in 1958. Those spills, and the company’s subsequent attempts to evade responsibility, have allegedly devastated the lives and livelihoods of local residents.

Anna Zalik, a professor with York University in Toronto, has been documenting Shell’s conduct in Nigeria for more than 20 years. She said the way the company portrays itself as a “responsible actor in the Canadian context” is disingenuous.

“The firm has been associated with these major human rights violations and all sorts of legal cases around actual violence against communities and severe environmental devastation in Nigeria, and yet tries to act as if their operations here are somehow not the same as their operations there,” she said.

“Their track record demonstrates an attempt to evade responsibility and liability for the pollution that they cause.”

Shell declined an interview request and said the characterisation of its operations “is not one we recognise”.

“Shell is committed to honesty, integrity and respect for people, and to conducting its business in an ethical and transparent manner, in accordance with applicable laws and regulations where we operate,” a spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.

The spokesperson added its operations in Nigeria included “complex and contested issues” and the allegations “do not reflect the challenging operating environment in the Niger Delta at the time, including large-scale oil theft, sabotage and illegal refining carried out by organized criminal gangs”.

Shell’s LNG facility in northwest British Columbia is supplied by the contentious Coastal GasLink pipeline, built by TC Energy between 2019 and 2024 across Wet’suwet’en territories without the consent of the nation’s Indigenous leaders, or Hereditary Chiefs. In 2020, construction of the 670-kilometre (420-mile) pipeline became the focal point for Indigenous-led protests, arrests and nationwide outrage.

KKR, a New York investment firm with vast global reach, is a majority owner of the pipeline. Last year, KKR faced controversy after its acquisition of Superstruct Entertainment, the parent company of numerous music festivals and franchises including the electronic music outfit, Boiler Room, and festivals like Barcelona’s Sonar and London’s Field Day. Dozens of artists also accused KKR of promoting illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.

At the time, KKR had holdings in a German media company, Axel Springer, which advertises real estate developments in the occupied West Bank, where Israel has been accused of ethnic cleansing as it forcibly displaces Palestinian residents.

KKR said it does not have real estate interests in the West Bank and no longer invests in Axel Springer. Whether the investment company retains financial interests in companies linked to Israeli defence contractors and cyber security firms that provide support to the Israeli military remains unclear.

As part of LNG Canada’s proposed expansion, the pipeline operator would install compressor stations along the route, including on Wet’suwet’en territories, to double the amount of gas it currently transports. In addition to its holdings in the Coastal GasLink pipeline, KKR is one of three investment companies vying for a purchase of Shell’s shares in LNG Canada, which would include the proposed expansion.

Meanwhile, Ksi Lisims would be supplied by the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline, an 800-kilometre (500-mile) linear project that would cross numerous First Nations territories. The pipeline and LNG facility are co-owned by Nisga’a Lisims, an Indigenous government in northwest British Columbia. Some of the neighbouring nations claim they were not adequately consulted and do not consent to the projects.

In 2025, French multinational TotalEnergies signed an agreement with Ksi Lisims LNG to buy two million tonnes of liquefied gas per year, while simultaneously acquiring a 5 percent stake in the project’s parent company, Texas-based Western LNG.

TotalEnergies has been accused of “complicity in war crimes, torture and enforced disappearance” at its LNG facility in Mozambique, according to a criminal complaint filed by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in late 2025. The complaint, filed with France’s national antiterrorism prosecutor, centres around the company’s complicity in the so-called “container massacre” in 2021. There is no update on the investigation by the prosecutor.

TotalEnergies was also implicated in reports about crude oil supplies to Israel, enabling the genocide in Gaza, where at least 75,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel waged war there in 2023. The French corporation was also accused of supplying the Russian military with feed gas used to produce jet fuel for planes that have bombed Ukraine.

TotalEnergies did not respond to requests for comment.