Why B.C.'s Pacific edge keeps getting rebuilt, from the 1902 cable to Kitimat LNG
Bamfield carried the first round-the-world telegraph in 1902; Kitimat now ships Montney gas to Asia in half the Gulf Coast sailing time. Shell owns the gas behind the plant, insiders are split, and Phase 2 lands when the delayed global supply wave does.
On November 1, 1902, according to the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre, the first two telegraph messages to encircle the globe were relayed. The last relay on the North American side ran through Bamfield, a cable station on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The British had picked it for the same reason Shell, Petronas, PetroChina, Mitsubishi and KOGAS picked Kitimat more than a century later: it is where North America sits closest to Asia by sea.
The commodity has changed from information to LNG (liquefied natural gas). The geography has not.
The cable was a commodity story
The Pacific Cable Board's line was one link in what became known as the All Red Line, a telegraph network that touched only British territory. Its eastern span ran 3,459 nautical miles, about 6,400 kilometres, from Fanning Island to Bamfield, the longest cable run in the world at the time. The cable ship Colonia laid it between September 18 and October 6, 1902. Francis Rattenbury, the architect of B.C.'s Parliament Buildings, designed the cable station, which the Canadian Pacific Railway built in 1901–1902.
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The All Red Line as drawn by George Johnson, 1902–03.Wikimedia Commons
Copper carried the signal, iron wire armoured it, and gutta-percha kept the sea out. Gutta-percha is a latex tapped from Southeast Asian trees, and it was the only material of its day that stayed a reliable insulator on the cold, high-pressure sea floor. Cable demand led to unsustainable harvesting and a collapse in supply. Polyethylene finally replaced gutta-percha around 1940.
Reels of gutta-percha-covered conducting wire, drawn by Robert Charles Dudley.Wikimedia Commons
The collapse in supply pattern did not end with telegraphs. In 1493, Charles C. Mann warns that natural rubber, now grown almost entirely on Southeast Asian plantations, is exposed to a South American leaf blight that could cross the Pacific. The bottleneck input is a recurring feature of industrial booms, and the LNG and grid build-out on B.C.'s north coast has its own.
Bamfield's station sent its last message on June 20, 1959, after a newer station opened in Port Alberni. The 1926 concrete building now houses the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre.
Kitimat: the route, rebuilt for gas
LNG Canada exported its first cargo on June 30, 2025. By March 2026 it was operating close to its full (Phase 1) capacity of 14 million tonnes a year, according to LSEG shipping data, and it shipped its 100th cargo in under a year. On September 28, 2026 the partners took the final investment decision on Phase 2. Ottawa puts that investment at $33 billion. It doubles capacity to 28 million tonnes a year, with first output expected around 2031. The next day, $TRP TC Energy confirmed that Coastal GasLink Phase 2 will go ahead, nearly doubling the 670-kilometre pipeline's current flow of about 2.1 billion cubic feet a day of Montney gas to the coast.
Kitimat's townsite and Douglas Channel, the route to the Pacific.District of Kitimat, CC BY-SA 4.0
The ownership has not changed since the 2018 investment decision: Shell holds 40%, PETRONAS 25%, PetroChina 15%, Mitsubishi 15% and KOGAS 5%. Capital is still arriving, though. On November 2, funds managed by Blackstone, together with Canadian pension investors, agreed to buy a 49.9% non-controlling stake in the Mitsubishi unit that holds its 15%, in a deal Blackstone valued at $3.1 billion.
The advantage is time at sea. Kitimat cuts the voyage to Asia to about 10 days, versus 20 from the US Gulf Coast through the Panama Canal, according to the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. That gap has mattered more in 2026 than anyone planned for. War with Iran, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and damage at Qatar's Ras Laffan complex led the International Energy Agency to say the global LNG supply wave will be delayed by at least two years.
Three other B.C. export projects stand behind LNG Canada:
Cedar LNG, majority-owned by the Haisla Nation and partnered with Pembina Pipeline (TSX: PPL), says its floating facility is more than half built and targets first LNG in 2028.
Woodfibre LNG, near Squamish, reported in June that it was more than 65% complete and on track for late 2027.
Ksi Lisims LNG, the Nisga'a Nation's project with Western LNG and Rockies LNG, is targeting an investment decision by the end of 2026. It has binding offtake for about 58% of a planned 12 million tonnes a year.
Shell buys the gas behind the plant
On September 2, 2026, Shell closed its acquisition of ARC Resources, the largest producer in the Montney basin that feeds Kitimat. Including assumed debt, the deal was valued at about C$22 billion. ARC shareholders received 0.40247 of a Shell share and $8.20 in cash for each ARC share.
Shell's announcement says the deal "establishes Canada as a heartland for Shell" and notes that its Groundbirch assets already supply LNG Canada, in which Shell holds 40%. Shell itself does not describe the acquisition as securing feed gas for Phase 2. That reading comes from analysts. Either way, the operator of North America's only Pacific LNG export plant now owns the largest pool of gas behind it.
Cheap gas is the point
Western Canadian gas producers have not had a windfall. Alberta's AECO benchmark averaged C$1.74 per gigajoule in 2025, and the discount to US Henry Hub widened to US$2.32 per MMBtu, according to the Alberta Energy Regulator. The regulator does credit the start of LNG exports with part of that year's increase, and it forecasts AECO at C$2.73 in 2026 with the discount narrowing to US$1.60.
For the LNG partners, the low price is the feature. LNG Canada runs on an equity-lifting structure: each partner takes its share of the output and sells it. In 2025, Shell's chief executive described the project's AECO indexation as "particularly attractive". The plant buys gas at one of the cheapest benchmarks in the world and ships it toward Asian buyers, whose spot LNG averaged US$17.5 per MMBtu in the second quarter of 2026, according to the IEA.
What insiders are doing
The Strikepoint insider-trade database tracks open-market trades that insiders report to SEDI. It shows insiders at Western Canadian gas producers splitting since the first cargo sailed. Most of these companies drill the Montney; Peyto's core is the Deep Basin. The table compares open-market trades in the 18 months before the first LNG Canada cargo with the roughly 16 months since. Grants, option exercises and company buybacks are excluded, and ARC is left out because of the Shell deal.
Producer
Insider buys (C$), Jan 2024–Jun 2025
Insider buys (C$), Jul 2025–Oct 2026
Insider sells (C$), Jan 2024–Jun 2025
Insider sells (C$), Jul 2025–Oct 2026
$TOU Tourmaline
$11.7M (5 buyers)
$29.8M (9 buyers)
$8.0M
$10.4M
$AAV Advantage
$4.6M (14 buyers)
$3.5M (9 buyers)
$0.1M
$2.6M
$PEY Peyto
$10.5M
$3.4M
$47.4M
$60.2M
$KEL Kelt
$4.1M
$1.7M
$11.0M
$14.3M
$POU Paramount
$4.0M
$1.0M
$18.9M
$11.8M
$BIR Birchcliff
$0.8M
$0.7M
$8.6M
$2.4M
At Tourmaline, insiders more than doubled their open-market buying after Kitimat started up, and the number of buyers nearly doubled too. At Peyto and Kelt, open-market selling rose. On this evidence, the people closest to these companies are not treating LNG Canada as a rising tide for every Western Canadian gas producer.
The demand spreads, and so does the bottleneck
Kitimat now shows up well beyond the producers' filings. Oilfield service companies cite LNG in their recent quarterly disclosures: Trican, Precision Drilling, Ensign, Pulse Seismic and Stampede Drilling. On September 9, junior explorer Copper Quest received an exploration permit for its Kitimat Copper-Gold Project, which it describes as about 10 kilometres from the deep-water port.
Power is the binding constraint on the north coast. Construction of the first phase of the North Coast Transmission Line began on September 3, 2026, with $3.9 billion committed to its first two phases and phased completion targeted for 2030. The line will deliver up to 600 megawatts to Ksi Lisims, which must be net-zero ready by 2030.
Copper cable: a bottleneck input for the north coast power build-out.Envato
The line also runs through mineral country. Strikepoint's project database counts 22 B.C. copper projects at the development stage and five in production.
Politics has turned more favourable. The B.C. Conservatives won the October 24 election, and premier-designate Lorne Doerkson has pledged to triple the province's natural gas production over nine years. Federally, Phase 2 had dedicated support from the Major Projects Office. Ottawa has said it will not implement the oil and gas emissions cap.
The Bamfield question
The bear case is the one Bamfield's own history teaches. The IEA expects the delayed supply wave to arrive rather than disappear. QatarEnergy's North Field East expansion is due to start its first train in the first half of 2027, and several US projects that reached investment decisions are scheduled for about 2030. Asian LNG demand is forecast to fall 0.5% in 2026, and Chinese imports are down 12%.
Phase 2's first output is expected around 2031, when the delayed supply is due to land. Today's Asian prices carry a war premium, and the AER expects the cheap-AECO advantage to narrow. The route from B.C. to Asia has outlasted the technology built on it once already: Bamfield closed when the cable moved, not when the Pacific did. The question for LNG investors is whether the plants being financed now are priced for the route or for the war.
Sources
Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre, history: bamfieldmsc.com/about/history
Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Francis Mawson Rattenbury: biographi.ca/en/bio/rattenbury_francis_mawson_16E.html
Telegrams Australia, Pacific Cable Board route and construction: telegramsaustralia.com
LNG Canada, Phase 2 final investment decision: lngcanada.ca/news
