On the LNG front, four major British Columbian LNG projects have created an alliance to coordinate community relations and labour strategies.

This is something that Australia should have looked at. Instead, there are six different LNG projects being built – three right next door to each other.

They are all competing for labour and parts and that has had the expected effect of causing costs to blow out.

The BC LNG Developers Alliance – made up of the Petronas-led Pacific North West LNG, the Shell Canada Energy-led LNG Canada, BG Group’s Prince Rupert LNG and the Kitimat LNG project – looks to head off those problems.

It is also providing a unified approach to its native title issues and working to win support from First Nations and other communities.

The members will collaborate on community outreach and labour training and work together to avoid duplication.

According to a report in The Globe and Mail three smaller LNG projects are considering joining.

The Canadian project proponents realise they are playing catch-up with the likes of Australia and Qatar in the LNG game. So they are trying to work smarter and learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before them.

In Australia the proponents of the various LNG projects, Gorgon, Wheatstone, Ichthys, Australia Pacific LNG, Gladstone LNG and Queensland Curtis LNG, all agree that they should have collaborated.

However, they also admit that they have all come from a history of competing with each other so the idea of collaboration was a difficult one to grasp.

If the BC LNG alliance does gain traction, it looks like it could head off many of the labour resourcing, logistics and native title issues that have blighted the Australian projects.

However, the Canadians are not content with just working together.

They are also trying to move first – at least in the North American region.

GlobalData managing analyst Carmine Rositano said Canada was developing pipelines to ensure its ability to increase crude exports into both the Atlantic and Pacific basins while the US was “procrastinating”

These include the proposed east energy access pipeline projects on both its west and east coasts.

GlobalData expects east energy access pipeline projects to transport about 1.2 million barrels of oil per day of crude oil from Alberta to refineries in Montreal, Quebec and New Brunswick, with marine terminals used for potential export purposes.

The project consists of turning a natural gas pipeline to oil, reversing the flows of existing pipelines and building pumping stations, tank terminals and marine facilities.

“The ability to move incremental volumes of oil to the east coast would also provide export opportunities for both India and Europe, reducing the latter’s dependency on Russian supplies that currently meet about 30% of its energy requirements,” Rositano said.

Two other major projects have been proposed for the transport of incremental production from Alberta to Canada’s west coast ports.

GlobalData reckons this will make more than 1MMbbl of crude oil available for export to the Asia-Pacific region.

The Northern Gateway project involves a crude oil export pipeline and condensate import pipeline between Alberta and a marine terminal in Kitimat, BC.

This project could transport 525,000bpd of oil sands crude from Alberta to the Asia-Pacific region and US west coast.

There is also an expansion program designed to increase the Trans Mountain pipeline capacity from 300,000bpd to 890,000bpd.

“The Trans Mountain pipeline project would involve building 12 new pump stations, 20 new tanks and a new twinned pipeline that will closely follow the existing Trans Mountain right of way,” Rositano said.

“Approval is currently being sought for this development from Canada’s national Energy Board and, if all goes well, construction would start in 2015 with operations commencing in 2017-18.”