Canada, Germany strike LNG deal to boost trade beyond US
Canada and Germany moved an LNG pact into the center of a wider trade reset, with a C$10 billion British Columbia project aiming at Europe.
Canada and Germany have turned a liquefied natural gas deal into a geopolitical signal. The agreement, tied to the proposed Ksi Lisims export facility on British Columbia’s coast, is meant to open a route beyond the United States for Canadian energy while giving Germany another non-Russian supply option in a market still shaped by war and disruption.
The pact is set to be signed with SEFE, Germany’s state-owned gas trader, and could eventually send up to 1 million metric tons, or 1.1 million U.S. tons, of LNG a year from northwestern British Columbia near the Alaska panhandle. For Ottawa, the timing fits Prime Minister Mark Carney’s pledge to double non-U.S. trade within a decade. For Berlin, it reflects a continuing effort to secure long-term gas supplies after losing most Russian pipeline imports in 2022.
The deal matters most as a test of whether Canada can convert its diversification rhetoric into infrastructure and contracts. Canada still sends almost all of its oil and gas exports to the United States, so even a modest new export lane to Europe carries outsized symbolic weight. But the commercial case is also real: Ksi Lisims is a proposed C$10 billion facility, and backers have been waiting for the kind of offtake signal that can help determine whether the project moves toward a final investment decision. If it goes ahead, shipments are expected to begin in the early 2030s.
The project has already cleared key regulatory steps. It received a federal decision statement on September 15, 2025, a British Columbia environmental assessment certificate on September 16, 2025, and was referred to Canada’s Major Projects Office on November 13, 2025. On January 20, 2026, Ksi Lisims and BC Hydro signed a memorandum of understanding to supply 600 megawatts of electricity once the North Coast Transmission Line is expanded, underscoring that power supply remains one of the main hurdles to completion.
Ksi Lisims is also being advanced as an Indigenous-led development. The Nisga’a Nation is part of the ownership structure alongside Rockies LNG and Western LNG, and the project’s public materials say it is intended to create education, training, employment and contracting opportunities for Indigenous communities. British Columbia Premier David Eby said the reported deal would strengthen the investment case for the plant, a sign that provincial leaders see the agreement as more than diplomacy. For Canada, it is a bid to loosen dependence on the U.S. market. For Germany, it is another step toward insulating its energy system from future shocks.
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