A cabin is seen on a 'floatel' that Woodfibre LNG plans to use to house 600 construction workers at a liquefied natural gas export facility being built near Squamish, on May 9.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
An energy project’s floating hotel for construction workers in British Columbia is all dressed up with nowhere to dock.
Councillors in Squamish, B.C., will be meeting on Tuesday night to vote again on whether the retrofitted cruise ship should be allowed to moor at a liquefied natural gas project. The floating hotel, dubbed a “floatel” by Woodfibre LNG, arrived on the West Coast in early 2024.
The vessel’s cabins are still sitting vacant as the District of Squamish takes longer than Woodfibre expected to determine whether to issue a temporary-use permit that would allow the ship with 652 single-occupancy rooms to dock.
The topic of the permit made it onto the agenda at the district’s council meeting on April 30. But four of the seven elected councillors cited environmental, safety and cultural concerns as they rejected Woodfibre’s application for the permit for the vessel named Isabelle X.
As part of its new campaign to gain approval for the permit, Woodfibre agreed to increase its security deposit for the floatel to $10-million to the Squamish district, compared with the previous $2-million. Squamish councillors will be mulling over fresh assurances from Woodfibre of being a good corporate citizen when they vote again on whether to grant the permit for the floatel, which is owned by Bridgemans Services Group LP.
After some finishing touches, Isabelle X was slated to start allowing the first wave of workers to board in early April.
Woodfibre had advised the district of the need to approve the permit by April 1. Instead, Isabelle X remains anchored near Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.
Woodfibre, a much-delayed venture that received its export licence in 2013, wants the ship to dock soon in order for construction workers to gain access to the site near Squamish, about 65 kilometres north of Vancouver.
“We’re available to accept residents as quickly as they can be onboarded,” Bridgemans co-owner and president Brian Grange said in an interview. “I just can’t reiterate enough about how environmentally sound this option that we’ve built is.”
The cruise ship launched under the name Isabella and entered service in Europe in 1989. Its name changed to Isabelle in 2013 and was rechristened as Isabelle X earlier this year. The ship served as temporary accommodation in Estonia for refugees who fled the war in Ukraine in 2022, before being acquired last year by Bridgemans and retrofitted in Estonia and Finland.
Tracey Saxby, executive director of My Sea to Sky, a climate activist group based in Squamish, said she is disappointed that Woodfibre chose the floatel over constructing accommodation on land that could have been later converted into affordable housing.
“Ultimately, the floatel is a solution for Woodfibre LNG, but it is not necessarily in the best interests of the community,” Ms. Saxby said in an interview.
The arrival of Isabelle X in B.C. has underscored opposing views among Squamish residents over Woodfibre. Plans for the export facility already have won regulatory approvals provincially and federally.
“We’ve all received many hundreds of e-mails both from those supporting the project and those opposing the project,” Squamish Mayor Armand Hurford said during a council meeting last month.
The project will be built on the site of a former pulp mill on the Squamish Nation’s traditional territory. “There are economic reconciliation measures,” including employment opportunities, the Indigenous group said in a statement, adding that there will be “mandatory cultural awareness programming for all workers.”
Elected councillors of the Squamish Nation voted narrowly in favour of supporting an impact benefits agreement with Woodfibre in 2018, subject to an array of environmental and cultural conditions being met.
Late last year, the Squamish Nation approved the floatel through its own regulatory process.
The tasks of construction workers at the Woodfibre site will include assembling large modules to be delivered from manufacturing facilities and fabrication yards in China.
The liquefaction plant’s modules will be located onshore while floating LNG storage tanks will be placed in the waters of Howe Sound.
John Desjarlais, executive director of the Indigenous Resource Network, said he’s concerned about the district’s delays in clearing the way for Isabelle X to dock. “I urge you to support the approval and implementation of the Woodfibre LNG floatel,” he said in an open letter to district councillors.
A separate open letter released by Woodfibre president Christine Kennedy said the district pushed for a housing solution that would accommodate non-local workers to avoid putting pressure on the community, which has low vacancy rates. “Woodfibre responded by investing $100-million in the community-driven solution of a floatel,” according to the letter.
Woodfibre is among only a handful of remaining prospects in B.C. planning to export natural gas in liquid form.
LNG Canada, which is building an export terminal in Kitimat, B.C., is gearing up to start shipping to Asia by mid-2025. LNG Canada’s $18-billion export terminal will be the country’s first facility for exporting LNG in ocean-bound tankers.
Other export possibilities include Cedar LNG, Ksi Lisims LNG, Tilbury LNG and the small-scale Northern Prince LNG. Summit Lake PG LNG and an unnamed project near Anyox are on the list of B.C. proposals that face high hurdles.
“A Canadian LNG industry will come at the cost of increased domestic emissions that threaten to undermine Canada’s climate obligations,” the International Institute for Sustainable Development said in a new report.
“The substantial risks associated with new LNG facilities suggest that LNG expansion in Canada is simply not viable from a long-term perspective,” the institute’s report said.
Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. ENB-T acquired a 30-per-cent stake in 2022 in Woodfibre, while the remaining 70 per cent is held by Pacific Energy Corp. Ltd. The latter is part of privately owned Singapore-based RGE Pte. Ltd., which is controlled by Indonesian businessman Sukanto Tanoto.
In 2016, Woodfibre had cost estimates of $1.6-billion for its Squamish-area terminal and $520-million for the associated 50-kilometre pipeline between Coquitlam and Squamish to be operated by FortisBC.
In 2022, Enbridge announced total estimated costs had soared to US$5.1-billion, including the export terminal and other expenses, notably those related to FortisBC.
Woodfibre and Enbridge didn’t provide a breakdown of how much that the pipeline accounts of the total costs, but FortisBC said in a regulatory filing that the Eagle Mountain-Woodfibre Gas Pipeline project alone will cost $1.6-billion.
Enbridge has a network of B.C. pipelines that would feed into FortisBC’s new line, to be completed within three years. Woodfibre plans to begin exporting LNG to Asia by late 2027.
FortisBC is awaiting a temporary-use permit from the district for the pipeline company’s planned work-force accommodation to be located on private land in Squamish.