Pacific NorthWest LNG receives 45 day extension to Environmental Assessment Review Period

The timeline for one of the North Coast's major LNG projects has shifted a bit, as the Province's Environmental Assessment Office has announced an extension of  the review stage for the environmental review process for the Pacific NorthWest LNG project.

A notice posted to the Province's Environmental Assessment Office website on September 11th, outlines that a request from Pacific Northwest LNG for the extension of 45 days to the original 180 day time limit had been granted.

Forty five days after the original deadline of September 21st, would make November 5th the new end to the current environmental review period.

The environmental Assessment review stage process was launched by the provincial office on March 25th of this year.

No explanation as to why Pacific Northwest LNG had requested the deadline extension has been released through the company website.

However, one might consider some of the discussion of late over environmental impact in the Lelu Island area as a potential reason for the added time of review.

Those issues were recounted in a recent article that appeared in the Financial Post and on an investor bulletin websites (see our review of those articles here)

Some of the items of note raised in that review of the LNG landscape in the region, could be at the heart of the requested extension.

In addition to providing for more time for review of the Environmental assessment, the 45 day extension will also most likely shift the time table for any prospective Final Investment Decision from Petronas and its growing list of partners in the proposed development.

You can review the notice of approval from the EAO website here.

The EAO website also provides a full listing of current documents regarding the Pacific Northwest LNG proposal which you can review here.

For more items of interest on the Pacific Northwest LNG project see our archive page

Update: Background on the request for the 45 day extension can be found in the correspondences section of the Project information section. Among some of the changes to be made to the Environmental Assessment portion of the project related to items such as dredging, the jetty-trestle construction and marine terminal design, as well as to worker camp accomodation provisions for the project.

You can access the full letter here.