Royal Dutch Shell, Korean firm Kogas, Malaysia’s Petronas, Mitsubishi and PetroChina have made a positive final investment decision to begin construction of the planned US$14 billion (€12.1 billion) Canada LNG project. Kitimat, home of around 6,000 people around 640 km north of Vancouver, is to be the site of the new infrastructure, which will include LNG processing units, storage tanks, loading lines, an upgraded marine terminal, flare stacks, a rail yard and water treatment facility. Two processing trains will be built initially, together having a capacity of 14 million tonnes per annum, but there will be the potential to add further processing trains. Each partner of the venture will be responsible for supplying their own gas to the facility. Strategically, the move is an interesting one – the exported LNG will be shipped to East Asia, in particular to feed the growing demand for gas in China, Japan and South Korea, and the site on the Pacific coast of Canada allows faster shipping times to the region in comparison to the Gulf of Mexico, from which most LNG from the US is exported. Shell sees a supply gap opening in the first half of the 2020s for export to East Asia, and this, together with rising gas prices in the Asian market and a belief that Asian countries will continue to turn to gas (switching from coal) to reduce carbon emissions secured the investment decision. Chevron and Woodside Petroleum are also looking at a project based near Kitimat, spurred by the same forces.