With Prime Minister Mark Carney preparing to visit India in the coming weeks, Canada’s energy minister sees potential for boosting his country’s liquefied natural gas exports there.
“India has huge demand for new LNG,” Tim Hodgson told reporters Friday, shortly after returning from his own trip to what he described as “one of the most important energy markets in the world.”
“There’s real opportunity for Canada to play a more significant role there,” he said, noting India’s plan to increase natural gas to 15% of its energy mix, up from 6% today.
Canada is looking at new terminals along its Pacific coast that could bring export capacity to 50mn metric tons of LNG annually by the end of the decade. That’s up from about 14mn metric tons today through the LNG Canada terminal in Kitimat, British Columbia, which opened last year.
Propane is also a potential major export to India, where millions of homes use it for cooking and heating, Hodgson said.
In the lead-up to Carney’s visit, which is likely to take place in March, the two countries have restarted formal discussions on energy. “This dialogue is essential in the Indian context, where most major energy companies are state-owned or state-directed,” Hodgson told reporters.
India may also benefit as Canada aims to export more of its oil off its west coast, he said — especially if it’s looking for alternatives to Russian crude to avoid US sanctions.
“Today we are selling less than 1% of our production to India, so there’s a real opportunity for us to have win-wins here for India and Canada,” he said.
BC Premier David Eby, whose province is home to Canada’s LNG export industry, recently led a trade mission to India and is courting investment from the country — not just in LNG, but also in critical minerals and other energy products.
“They really want to secure those off-take agreements: rare earth elements, nickel, copper were key areas of interest for them,” Eby told Bloomberg in an interview.
