Murky historical past
A number of of the businesses concerned within the two initiatives, both immediately or via financing agreements, have murky histories and troubling portfolios. Home prices additionally embrace accusations of environmental air pollution and potential human rights violations.
Since commissioning started in early 2025, a technical downside on the newly constructed LNG Canada facility led to the plant burning off greater than 350 million cubic metres of fuel that yr, placing it among the many world’s highest sources of flaring emissions.
The area people was unaware of the dimensions or nature of the problem till reporting by the Canadian environmental information outlet The Narwhal revealed the plant had began operations regardless of figuring out an “integrity problem” with its tools.
LNG Canada is owned by a consortium of 5 overseas firms: Shell, Petronas, Korea Fuel, PetroChina and Mitsubishi. Shell is almost all shareholder.
Like TotalEnergies, Shell signed a deal to buy two million tonnes of LNG from Ksi Lisims in 2024. The company lately purchased Arc Sources, a Canadian oil and fuel firm with belongings in northeast British Columbia and Alberta.
Shell’s oil and fuel operations in Nigeria are amongst its extra infamous. The United Nations estimates Shell spilled greater than 13 million barrels of crude oil in no less than 7,000 incidents within the Niger Delta because it began operations there in 1958. These spills, and the corporate’s subsequent makes an attempt to evade accountability, have allegedly devastated the lives and livelihoods of native residents.
Anna Zalik, a professor with York College in Toronto, has been documenting Shell’s conduct in Nigeria for greater than 20 years. She mentioned the way in which the corporate portrays itself as a “accountable actor within the Canadian context” is disingenuous.
“The agency has been related to these main human rights violations and all kinds of authorized circumstances round precise violence in opposition to communities and extreme environmental devastation in Nigeria, and but tries to behave as if their operations listed below are by some means not the identical as their operations there,” she mentioned.
“Their observe file demonstrates an try and evade accountability and legal responsibility for the air pollution that they trigger.”
Shell declined an interview request and mentioned the characterisation of its operations “shouldn’t be one we recognise”.
“Shell is dedicated to honesty, integrity and respect for folks, and to conducting its enterprise in an moral and clear method, in accordance with relevant legal guidelines and laws the place we function,” a spokesperson wrote in an emailed assertion.
The spokesperson added its operations in Nigeria included “complicated and contested points” and the allegations “don’t mirror the difficult working atmosphere within the Niger Delta on the time, together with large-scale oil theft, sabotage and unlawful refining carried out by organized legal gangs”.
Shell’s LNG facility in northwest British Columbia is provided by the contentious Coastal GasLink pipeline, constructed by TC Vitality between 2019 and 2024 throughout Moist’suwet’en territories with out the consent of the nation’s Indigenous leaders, or Hereditary Chiefs. In 2020, building of the 670-kilometre (420-mile) pipeline grew to become the focus for Indigenous-led protests, arrests and nationwide outrage.
KKR, a New York funding agency with huge world attain, is a majority proprietor of the pipeline. Final yr, KKR confronted controversy after its acquisition of Superstruct Leisure, the guardian firm of quite a few music festivals and franchises together with the digital music outfit, Boiler Room, and festivals like Barcelona’s Sonar and London’s Discipline Day. Dozens of artists additionally accused KKR of selling unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory.
On the time, KKR had holdings in a German media firm, Axel Springer, which advertises actual property developments within the occupied West Financial institution, the place Israel has been accused of ethnic cleaning because it forcibly displaces Palestinian residents.
KKR mentioned it doesn’t have actual property pursuits within the West Financial institution and not invests in Axel Springer. Whether or not the funding firm retains monetary pursuits in firms linked to Israeli defence contractors and cyber safety companies that present assist to the Israeli navy stays unclear.
As a part of LNG Canada’s proposed enlargement, the pipeline operator would set up compressor stations alongside the route, together with on Moist’suwet’en territories, to double the quantity of fuel it at present transports. Along with its holdings within the Coastal GasLink pipeline, KKR is considered one of three funding firms vying for a purchase order of Shell’s shares in LNG Canada, which would come with the proposed enlargement.
In the meantime, Ksi Lisims can be provided by the Prince Rupert Fuel Transmission pipeline, an 800-kilometre (500-mile) linear undertaking that will cross quite a few First Nations territories. The pipeline and LNG facility are co-owned by Nisga’a Lisims, an Indigenous authorities in northwest British Columbia. A few of the neighbouring nations declare they weren’t adequately consulted and don’t consent to the initiatives.
In 2025, French multinational TotalEnergies signed an settlement with Ksi Lisims LNG to purchase two million tonnes of liquefied fuel per yr, whereas concurrently buying a 5 % stake within the undertaking’s guardian firm, Texas-based Western LNG.
TotalEnergies has been accused of “complicity in struggle crimes, torture and enforced disappearance” at its LNG facility in Mozambique, based on a legal grievance filed by the European Middle for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in late 2025. The grievance, filed with France’s nationwide antiterrorism prosecutor, centres across the firm’s complicity within the so-called “container bloodbath” in 2021. There is no such thing as a replace on the investigation by the prosecutor.
TotalEnergies was additionally implicated in experiences about crude oil provides to Israel, enabling the genocide in Gaza, the place at least 75,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel waged struggle there in 2023. The French company was additionally accused of supplying the Russian navy with feed fuel used to provide jet gasoline for planes which have bombed Ukraine.
TotalEnergies didn’t reply to requests for remark.
