Robert Delamar: Kanata LNG, the Frog Lake Partnership & a 12-Year Bet on Canadian Energy

Can a Calgary startup with a Cree First Nation as its largest shareholder build Canada's next great LNG project?

In this episode of Power Struggle, recorded with Robert Delamar calling in from Tokyo at 6 a.m., Stewart Muir is joined by the co-founder and CEO of Kanata Clean Power and Climate Technologies Corp to unpack one of the biggest energy stories Canadians haven't heard yet.

Last week in Vancouver, Delamar and his partners announced Kanata LNG — a proposed 12 million tonne per annum facility in the Prince Rupert area that would match the scale of LNG Canada and anchor a new energy hub for northwestern BC. The company's largest shareholder is Frog Lake First Nations, a Cree nation in northeast Alberta, and the project is being built on a 50/50 co-development model with First Nations rights and title holders in the region.

They discuss:

• How displacing coal with Canadian natural gas could cut global power emissions in half—roughly 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions on Earth
• Why Japan, Korea, and India are looking to Canada for energy security after the Strait of Hormuz crisis
• The cost problem: why coal is half the price of LNG and how Canada can still compete
• The Major Projects Office, the end of the consumer carbon tax, and the policy conditions making this moment possible
• The Frog Lake First Nations model—50/50 governance, shared wealth, and a template for what Indigenous partnership looks like in 2026
• Why the Montney basin alone could supply Japan's thermal power needs for 200 years
• The 12-year journey, the dozen co-founders who went years without paycheques, and what Canada can learn from Silicon Valley
• Why "how would you do that" beats "that's a dumb idea" as a response to audacious projects

This is a conversation about ambition, partnership, and the entrepreneurial culture Canada needs to build the energy superpower it keeps talking about.

At a time when allies are reaching out for secure supply and global emissions keep climbing, the case for Canadian LNG has rarely been clearer.

The question is no longer whether Canada has the resources or the partners to build at this scale — but whether it has the courage to back the people willing to try.

#PowerStruggle #RobertDelamar #KanataLNG #LNG #CanadianEnergy #FrogLakeFirstNations #EnergySuperpower #PrinceRupert #IndigenousPartnership #EnergyPolicy

The energy conversation is polarizing. But the reality is multidimensional. Get the full story with host Stewart Muir.

Reach out to us with thoughts, questions, or ideas at info@powerstruggle.ca

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Transcript

Energy Security Stakes In East Asia

SPEAKER_00 0:00

80 kilometers away over those mountains. There's enough artillery there that would make the Ukraine-Russia war look like you know a party. And the people of South Korea bravely and nobly lived their days and went out and built the world's tenth largest economy despite those facts. Without any energy, by the way.

Meet Bob Delamar

SPEAKER_01 0:36

This is Power Struggle. Welcome to another episode. I'm really excited. I'm really excited about our guest today. His name is Bob Delamar. He's coming to us from East Asia, where he's on a pretty exciting trip. I'll let him explain it. Bob and I have known each other for a few years. He's incredibly experienced as an explainer, entrepreneur in Canadian energy, especially on the West Coast. So, Bob, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Thank you, Stuart. Thank you for having me here today. Yeah, you mentioned East Asia. I'm actually calling in from a hotel room at 6 in the morning in Tokyo. I woke up at 4 a.m. and such is the uh the life and the travails of an of an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Well, you've been busy and there was some huge news. Nobody saw this come in. It had to do with LNG. Take us back. What happened last week?

The Kanata LNG Announcement

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Yeah, I I I saw some of the headlines about where did this come from? And in fact, it's a 12-year journey to get here. So I suppose from the public's perspective, uh, this is new for me. Um more than a decade of of blood, sweat, and uh toil have has gone into this uh to this moment, and it really is a capstone. So we announced last week on Tuesday, June 16th, in Vancouver with the president of Hanwa Ocean's EPU unit, Philippe Levy, British Columbia's newest LNG project. And that project will be if everything gets built, a 12 million ton per annum LNG facility that anchors an energy hub that we believe will be trans transformative for the economy of northwestern BC, for the Prince Rupert area where we plan to situate it, and really help to build this energy superpower story that our federal government seems keen on selling around the world. Well, look, we are 100% aligned in trying to make that happen. And and uh like I said, it's been 12 years in the making to get here to do that.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

So what's the name of this project?

SPEAKER_00 2:56

The project is Kanata LNG. So the company that is sponsoring and developing it is my company. I co-founded the company along with some prominent Canadians, and it's the extension of and really the, like I said, the culmination of a of a 12-year journey. Um, and we'll get into that. Um, but the company is called Kanata Clean Power and Climate Technologies Corp. It's a Calgary-based company, although I split my time between Vancouver and Calgary. We were first uh founded in the summer of 2019, incorporated in the depths of the pandemic on April 9th, 2020. And so I'm giving those dates because back to the no one saw this coming. Uh, 2020 is uh more than six years ago since we incorporated the company. Um, and it gives you a sense of the journey that we've been on to get here. Uh the company is a Canadian company. Our largest shareholder is Frog Lake First Nations. Frog Lake First Nations are a Cree nation based in the northeast corner of the province of Alberta. And they've been on this journey with us from the beginning as well. And we're just more than I couldn't tell you how pleased we are to be able to talk a little bit about Frog Lake and the impact that they've had on this project. And we'll get into that in a moment.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Yes, great. 12 million tons a year. That's about the size of uh LNG Canada, which has now been in operation for a year. I noticed yesterday they Facebook that they've had 100 cargoes that have shipped out of there. I would roughly estimate that that equates to half a GDP point, half a percentage of Canadian GDP from that one project. It's almost like it's an industry, but it's one project. So if you do this project, Bob, you will potentially add a half a point to Canadian GDP.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Yeah, and that's just the beginning, of course. As I mentioned, this is an energy hub concept. And so we're also looking at developing future fuels like low-carbon blue hydrogen, some power generation on the site. And so, yes, I and really credit the credit goes to our friends at LMG Canada. And I want to take a moment and specifically point out the contribution of my friend uh Mick Namiki. Namiki-san was Mitsubishi Corporation's uh head in Canada for a long time. And that was a journey. Getting that project off the ground was a challenge of a lifetime. And I know what someone like my friend Mick went through to get that project off the ground. And so Canadians need to recognize the the challenge and the difficulty in making these projects happen, uh, and that actual real people sit behind those developments. And in this case, it was a very humble, unassuming Japanese salary man came to Canada on an assignment and from there helped to generate, along with Shell and his other partners, um a true energy security story for Japan. And boy, the timing couldn't have been better. They started shipping cargoes last fall, and all of a sudden you have the world's single greatest energy crisis coming out of the Gulf a few months later.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

So timing. You know, when when you look back on the conditions that would maybe say, Bob, don't do this. You have critics saying, well, there's going to be a glut of LNG, you're wasting your time, you're going to lose all your investors' money because there won't be a market for that. You've got those saying, well, you can't build another pipeline. It's it's impossible because social license. You've got those saying, well, how could we possibly supply not just one, but two, three, four, five, six, maybe even seven? You'd be the seventh LNG project in line. Is there enough gas for that? Is there enough capacity across the land? Is there enough money in the world to build all of those massively expensive facilities and the pipelines they need? Is there enough grit in Canada to bring people together who can actually deliver projects of this ambitious scale? Is it likely that once where we had a list of 20 projects almost on the West Coast, and then that dwindled down, now it's going back up, that that

Natural Gas As A Climate Tool

SPEAKER_01 7:30

it could actually stay up there and reach this potential. You think of all these things. And there's, I'm sure, a long lineup of naysayers down the street that you're aware of, Bob. Uh, what do you say to that?

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Yeah, I hear them all the time. Uh Steer, you can imagine being in this business. Resiliency is kind of the key. You kind of one has to close your ears and focus on the mission. And for me, the mission really is about climate change and specifically about decarbonization. And so just because Donald Trump became president of the United States didn't mean that climate change suddenly disappeared. Um, just because the United States is now really in a kind of reorientation of some of their economy back toward coal, for example. The reality is that we sit in a situation here globally where climate matters and we're about to see a Super El Nino, it seems, this summer. Um where are these climate-based uh changes coming from? Well, obviously it's from CO2 emissions. And the way to resolve and make the world a better place is obviously to reduce those emissions. And how you do that, you do that with cheap Canadian natural gas. It's the single most important resource that we have for combating climate change right now. And it's surprising to me, perhaps it's why Canadians don't win the Stanley Cup anymore as well. Um, I was thinking about that earlier. There's there's such a loud press in this country, such that you wonder why would anybody want to start a company in the energy space given the negativity. And you just shake your head because Canada is the solution to this problem. Our natural gas in Western Canada specifically is the solution to this problem. Like just to remind your viewers, and let's let's get some facts out here real quick, because I think it's important to do so. I mean, if we are able to simply reduce coal-fired power, which produces about 11 gigatons of CO2 annually, that's about a quarter of the world's CO2 emissions, just reducing coal-fired power by replacing it with natural gas, um, you would cut those emissions in half. So we're talking about reducing global emissions by five to six gigatons a year. That's one-tenth of all greenhouse gas emissions on Earth. Why isn't as a society we're rallying behind the entrepreneurs and the people like the mikis of the world that fought huge battles to get these projects built when the ultimate end is good?

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Well, let's dig into that. Maybe start with that last thing, which is the climate argument, I would call

What Japan And Korea Need

SPEAKER_01 10:38

it. You talk about displacing coal. So you're in Tokyo right now, you've been traveling around that region, not just for this project, but you've been doing that for a lot of years. You have an incredible network there. I'd like to know what do you hear from the the people in those markets? You know, we get it secondhand through the news that yeah, they want more energy, more diverse energy, and so on. But let's dig into it. What do you hear from those buyers, the utilities, the uh government people about the need they have that they think Canada can serve?

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Yeah, it's super interesting. What you hear in the media every day versus what you actually hear from CEOs and large energy companies are two different things. And government obviously has its own policy agenda. And yet, when it comes down to the people that got to pay the bill, in this case, utilities, steel manufacturers, right, folks that actually provide services to our economies. The real challenge right now is cost. To put this back into perspective, why hasn't the world simply gone off coal? If that if that harm is that great, why don't we just turn off the coal? Well, the answer is it's half the price of the LNG, right? Roughly half.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

It's a lot cheaper. It would be quite rational for people to use the cheapest form of any commodity, in this case, energy.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

And specifically, in the case of the world's largest emerging economy, which is China, 65% of the power generated in China is still generated from coal. So why aren't the Chinese going off coal? Well, part of it is an energy security argument, part of its sovereignty, uh, but part of its cost. And so there really was a tailwind. And I don't mean to confuse your listeners or your viewers on this point. The Strait of Hormuz crisis created the precondition for this project to get launched. Korea, Japan still import 90% plus of their energy. And when you had the Strait of Hormuz shut, and with the world's single largest provider being in Qatar, unable to ship cargoes, there really was a crisis. And I don't think, again, that Canadians really understand that. Because Canada's vast, it has three oceans, right? One neighbor, the neighbor happens to be the world's most powerful economy. I mean, we we live in a wonderful, almost eddyic existence in Canada from an energy perspective. Canadians really do not understand what the rest of the world has to go through in order to maintain a standard of life similar to the one that we enjoy, and we're privileged and lucky to enjoy at home. And so, in the case of Japan and Korea, two of the world's largest economies, they have to import 90% of their energy. That energy's got to come from somewhere. And if most of that energy was coming from Qatar, and as you can imagine, they couldn't ship any cargoes. What do you call that? I mean, that was a crisis. And so that crisis was a catalyst for what, for where we are right now in getting the project launched. But that was a momentary crisis. Crises pass. The bigger challenge, which is climate, which is cost, that's really the core issue that we're dealing with with this project and why what we need to succeed in conditions.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Japan and Korea are not only large economies, they're very wealthy countries. And their uh hard work and uh decades of breaking into exports have made them that. There's other countries that are populous and large, but they're not wealthy. I think of India, and only a few days ago I was actually on a stage with the High Commissioner of India to Canada who really went out of his way to say, in the end, price will be what determines whether we're going to be buying your commodities in Canada or from Canada for India, not whether you have a green halo or we think you're nice people and you're in the Commonwealth or any host of other reasons. Price. Um can Canada um sorry, excuse me a minute.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Let's let's uh grab some water here. Good call.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Can Canada compete on price?

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Yes, we can. There's no question about it. But that is the key to it all. Think about this. You've got this challenge in the form of climate change. You have a solution, which is reduce global emissions, 10% of global emissions by half by replacing one fuel stuff with the other, but that fuel costs half the price of the one that'll reduce the emissions. Now you're setting up the challenge. So for Canada to compete, we have abundant natural gas. Canada alone could supply Japan for a couple hundred years. Um, actually, specifically, that's just the Montney Basin that could do that. And that's not even counting other sources of potential gas in the country. It's not counting Alberta, which obviously has ample resources as well. And if Canada were to supply and be the only supplier to Japan and Korea, uh, we could supply natural gas all of their power needs for 100 years, all their thermal power needs. It's about half the electricity that they generate in the country. So those are remarkable statistics. And again, back to the uh the blessings that we have at home. Canada is energy rich, but we are absolutely poor when it comes to competition with our global friends like the Qataris and Australians and the Americans. Um, and it really is a cost issue for them. And here's the interesting reason why our

Why Canadian LNG Costs More

SPEAKER_00 16:54

products cost so much. And this is not going to come to surprise to anyone's surprise in Canada. We have a huge country, right? I mean, famously, uh I believe it was William Lyon Mackenzie King that famously said that some countries have too much history and Canada has too much geography, right? I believe is how the quote goes. And so that geography, that that challenge of building across these vast distances, that's where the cost comes from. And it's interesting because Canada used to have a policy consensus, which was that we would mutualize the development of major infrastructure. And it wasn't a right issue or a left issue, conservative or liberal. Bill Davis built Ontario Hydro as a conservative. WAC Bennett built all of British Columbia's power infrastructure as a conservative. So that mutualization, and just to be clear, I'm not necessarily talking about crown corporations or the government building it, but rather the fact that you have infrastructure that is shared so that an economy can emerge, that's really, really the key. So the United States has that in the form of the U.S. Gulf Coast. The U.S. Gulf Coast has so many pipelines, it's so vast it's so dense with energy infrastructure that when you build an LNG facility, all you're talking about is the cost of building the liquefaction trains. That's it. The power's there already, the pipelines are there, they'll deliver it to you. You can go to Kinderborg and get a pipeline, they'll drop off your gas. Canada, there's no such thing. You have to build a pipeline to then get, then build your liquefaction. In some cases, you have to build the upstream gas production as well. And so all that cost on cost is really what has kept us from being globally competitive until now. But here's the good news. We have what they call in my old world, which was uh we can talk about that, I guess, a little bit previously. How does one become an energy developer? I get that question a lot. Well, I started out in Silicon Valley, dropped out of UBC Law School in the middle of the first dot-com boom to go to a tech company. And it was actually a networking software company, and I learned all about networks. And there's something, there's a value in a node, in a network, and the bigger the value, it has something that people know is called a network effect. That the more value you have in that node based on the fact that more users use it. So we're building an energy node in British Columbia now, thankfully. And that energy node is it started, its anchor tenant was LNG Canada, who really got us all off the ground. But it's also interesting. The infrastructure that was built to power LNG Canada, specifically the pipeline, is exclusive to LNG Canada. Uh-huh. Well, that's interesting. So now you're starting to see the outline of some of our challenges. It's expensive to build, you have to build it all de novo. And so who would want to share that infrastructure?

SPEAKER_01 20:05

So, what is the challenge? You have to build a pipeline from what I'm hearing. How are you going to do that?

SPEAKER_00 20:12

Yeah, so we're not planning to build a pipeline. That's the good news. If there is uh sufficient demand and we are able to sell our LNG to customers around the world, then pipelines will follow. The market will be a solution to this issue, but we need to build a critical mass. It needs not just be our project, but rather, you mentioned, I think, in your opening, Stuart, that we had 20 plus projects in British Columbia at one time. The larger the node, the more valuable it is, right? That's the network effect. And so given that, our project should be a catalyst for building more pipelines. The more pipelines we have, the more projects we will have. The more projects we have, the lower the incremental cost per ton of capacity that we bring online. And now we're globally competitive. And so this is where the whole of society question comes back from a from a perspective of the population of Canada. If we can truly make a dent in climate change, this country, by selling natural gas around the world to displace coal, then as a country, shouldn't we be writing our MPs and saying, hey, where are those policies? Where's that investment that'll set the preconditions to build the necessary infrastructure so that we can really get this industry off the ground?

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Bob, you mentioned earlier

Infrastructure, Permitting, And Price

SPEAKER_01 21:50

the conditions that exist right now that are new. I think you attribute them to Prime Minister Kearney. What are the conditions that have come along that that weren't in place earlier? Before his arrival, that you think are the ones that that could make the difference here.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

Or I'm going to talk about bad policy for a second that seemed like a good solution at the time, and then we can talk about what Mr. Carney has done and taken some political hits in doing so, but was absolutely right. Here's the challenge. If cost is driving the demand side, the solution is not to create policy that increases your cost. And the policy that we had for the last 10 years was carbon taxes. With a carbon tax, what you've essentially done is increased the cost of delivering that climate solution to the customers that need it and are unwilling to displace higher CEO to emitting fuels because that's whatever the societal's values are at that given time. I mean it is what it is. I can't change the Chinese Communist Party and their core geopolitical views of the world, right? But what we can do is sell them cheaper energy. And if you have an industrial carbon tax, for example, that increases the cost of that production, you are creating a disincentive for those buyers to buy your product. Period, full stop. And it's interesting because I'm neither a conservator or a liberal. And I mean, Siri, you and I have talked about this many times. I'm zealously nonpartisan. Um, I like to say that there is uh no shortage of bad ideas on either side of the aisle, seems in politics sometimes. Uh, but that's also true. There's no, and I've seen this in British Columbia in my lifetime, uh, no shortage of good ideas from either side of the aisle as well. No government has a monopoly on bad policy, no, no government has um has a monopoly on good policy. And what I've seen is is left-to-center governments do some really interesting things policy-wise. And that's also true on the right. And so specifically here, the policy that created a tailwind for us was major was the major project office. It's everything. 12 months to permitting certainty allows for capital to align with the risk side of the equation such that you know at the end of the day that after you spend that money and complete your studies, that you will have a decision. And that certainty is everything. Now, Mr. Carney has taken some heat in the media. Um, and it seems from folks in his own party, we saw a former environment minister resign recently, because they have they have removed the carbon tax, uh consumer carbon tax, at least, for now, and we'll see what happens with with industrial carbon taxes. And there's a place for them, don't get me wrong. There's a there's a place for a carbon tax in the policy mix. Um but it seems like, as Mr. Carney has said, Canada needs to become an energy superpower. He's been taking uh some political heat. And actually, what this policy enables is Canada to build and ship more natural gas to the world that needs it. And that the more natural gas we ship, the greater the likelihood that we're gonna manage this climate crisis in our in our lifetimes. So what he's doing is actually it it's empowering uh the solution.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

With an unprecedented coalition of agreement across governments right now in Canada on the desirability of LNG, there's really no one who is speaking out against it, who's in power. And in these conditions, uh, is there anything else? I mean, these are good conditions. You've mentioned a few things that have swung your way. Is there anything that still needs work?

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Yeah, I think we're going to get into this pipelining conversation again. And it's not necessarily the fight that I'm going to fight at the end of the day. I'm a customer for a pipeline. And we're going to pay lots of money to the developers of those pipelines so that they can build the pipeline. But there is a constituency in this country that is of the view that they must fight and protest and and oppose all new energy development. And you will see arguments like the demand side in LNG, there's a glut coming, Canada doesn't have the economic ability to compete in that space, so we should just do um something else and we shouldn't export LNG, which is an insane proposition. Just to be clear, like, want to get that out of the way. That's insanity.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Okay, so Bob,

First Nations Equity And Governance

SPEAKER_01 27:12

I want to know what's different now. You've talked about how you've been involved in the sector actively for more than a decade. This is the period where we've had that flush of projects come in and go away. Now you're coming in uh over this last decade. We've had incredible changes in how First Nations are involved in the Canadian economy, especially major projects. We've had, I don't think you could could have predicted how different things would be in terms of who owns a project. We've gone from benefit agreements to equity and majority ownership of LNG projects. It's incredible what's happened. You have been working with Frog Lake. You've mentioned this band, this First Nation from Alberta. Tell us about that relationship and also how it fits into your view of how major projects, including yours, are going to unfold.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Yeah, thanks, Stuart. I I think it's really the key to everything. First Nations in Canada, I mentioned previously the quote that some countries have too much uh history and Canada has too much geography. But in the specific instance of the relationship between industrial development and economic development in Western Canada and First Nations, it's the opposite. There's a lot of history there. And it's not a good history. Let's not beat around the bush. It's it's a tragic brutal history. And the net result is when we had the first boom, I think incorrectly uh some people suggested that it was First Nations opposition that that killed that first boom. It's nothing can be further from the truth. I think quite rightly, First Nations, especially in the Northwest, where massive industrial projects were developed without any indigenous input or consent 75 years ago, that there was a necessary sense of concern, caution, conservatism, and First Nations pushed back because they finally had the constitutional rights and title to do that. Section 35 in 1982 obviously was a massive change uh to the political and constitutional landscape of this country. And I'm very, very blessed and lucky because one of my co-founders is Chief Joe Dion. Uh Joe was the head of the Alberta, uh was the grand chief of Alberta during the repatriation of the Constitution in 1982. He was part of the negotiating group that ensured that Section 35 got into the Constitution, which it should have been there from the beginning, recognizing Aboriginal rights and title because they've never gone away, as First Nations will tell you. And as such, with that tool, uh First Nations were then able to assert political and ultimately economic power. And you're correct, it went from consultation, accommodation, and benefits agreements to First Nations saying this is a sovereignty question. And hey, we can build our nation's infrastructure, we can build schools, we can get our kids into the best uh soccer and basketball programs. Basketball is a huge thing in the Northwest Coast, right? We can have that infrastructure if we start building and owning projects, specifically energy projects. And so, I mean, it's been can you you've you've obviously done this many times in the past, talking about the Cedar LG uh project and Hysla and the impact it's had on that nation. Um so we don't need to go into it today, but that's the model. And the good news is that Frog Lake First Nation in Alberta was looking at doing that in the early days of my company on a project in Alberta. And it just so happened that our our co-founder, Joe, uh, was very close to that nation. And so he's a former chief of Kehu and Cree Nation, which is just down the road. It's in the uh in that in the area of uh Treaty Six, a beautiful area of lakes, rolling, rolling hills, a stunning part of the country. And so Joe made the introduction of to Frog Lake First Nation for us. And Frog Lake, which is one of the largest conventional oil and gas um producers in Canada, so it's a First Nation with a lot of oil. They were chat, they were struggling with the issue of how do we take this incredible neat resource, which at Frog Lake funded massive infrastructure. If you visit Frog Lake First Nation, they have a beautiful hockey rink and the schools. Um, right now they're doing this 365 recovery center, which is just stunning architecturally, and the the idea of healing the people in the nation uh through this center is really, really cool. All the funds that came to build that infrastructure came from oil. And so Frog Lake and their elders, as stewards of the earth and people they care about the creator's view of their responsibility seven generations in the future, said, How do we deal with the fact that our wealth comes from oil? But obviously there are climate impacts from the production of oil. And the net result was we they invested in a project which was a low-carbon hydrogen project. So we looked at low, low-carbon power, CCUS, and hydrogen with the nation. And that's what really kicked this off. And so that project was a blue hydrogen project. And blue hydrogen essentially is you take natural gas, natural gas, the chemical form of CH4, you strip out this the carbon, and then you have hydrogen. Um, and then hydrogen can then uh be reconverted into uh other molecules like night nitrogen, uh add nitrogen, and you can and you have ammonia. And ammonia is great because of course there's no CO2 emissions when you burn ammonia. And so the nation looked at their responsibility. They looked at the reality of their economic situation, which was that oil created their prosperity, and they said, how do we solve for climate change and also maintain our standard of living and our and our economy on the nation? And the result was this hybrid solution, which became this um hydrogen ammonia project. Well, hey, guess what? In miniature, that nation is struggling with exactly the same challenge that we are in Western Canada, writ large. Resource-based economy, challenges from the production of those resources and the contribution to climate change. The end result being, and I think Frog Lake absolutely nailed it, they said, hey, we're going to look at these energy transition technologies, and we're going to look at and be pragmatic about the fact that we can reduce arms with the resources that we have today while maintaining our prosperity. And so that was the genesis of our first project, which is still ongoing. Uh, we just finished a uh $7.7 billion pre-feed study for that project. It's very interesting because that project is likely going to end up in Prince Rupert now, uh, because there was a challenge of moving ammonia over the rail, over the over the uh the Rocky Mountains. There was opposition to ammonia on railways. So some of these issues in terms of the political pushback, they haven't been resolved yet, right? Um hey, if there had been a hydrogen pipeline from Alberta to BC, then we would build a ton of hydrogen plants in Alberta, but such infrastructure doesn't exist. Starting to see the themes, right? Like history doesn't repeat at rhymes. So these challenges, you constantly are approaching them uh with a view to, and this is ultimately where I think entrepreneurs are the ones that are gonna solve these problems. You solve them by by tackling them one at a time. And the cool thing about Frog Lake was they've been our partner from the beginning, walking alongside us and a true partner. Actually, it's interesting about that structure is it's a 51-49 structure. So actually, Frog Lake has a majority ownership, but on the governance side is 50-50. So at the board level, if we have a disagreement, there is an arbitration right in the event that, you know, goodness forbid, something goes uh really sideways, but in reality, it forces consensus at the board level. Hey, that's unique, that's interesting. What is that? Oh, that that's consistent with First Nations governance models, right? Right. So we used our modern democratic, legal, and other structures to implement something quite old in order to move a project forward. Um and so that's the model that we were bringing to British Columbia for the LNG project.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

So, how does the Frog Lake experience provide a template for what you're gonna do now with LNG Bob?

SPEAKER_00 36:45

Yeah, it's the template that um you've seen uh with the Cedar LNG development with Hysla, um, and it's the offer that we've made to the local rights and title holders in the Prince Rupert region. So we've approached three nations with rights and title um in that in the area where we're planning to develop the project. And the offer is the Frog Lake model. It's a 50-50 joint venture co-development model. The governance structure will be the same, 50-50 with arbitration write out. And it'll just mirror our experience over the last six years working with Frog Lake, where we're compelled by the structure to work out our problems together through dialogue. And what was the reception it's it's been very positive. I mean, I can't really get into the details and haven't publicly disclosed who the nations are and the status of those discussions because that's out of honestly out of respect for the nations and their decision-making processes. I mean, the nations locally have hereditary and and um and then Indian Act-based uh decision-making power. Um, those two systems of government governance are are in parallel. Um, they require time.

SPEAKER_01 38:17

You know, hey Bob, if I can interrupt, I think probably a lot of people watching who are uh knowledgeable about the industrial side of this are amazed that you're able to be as transparent and willing to come on and have this conversation with me at this stage. I appreciate your candor because others are looking for this information. They're looking for leadership and knowledge transference. And I just really appreciate that you have gone so far. I know I know there's commercial issues, all kinds of things must be brewing. You can't talk about absolutely understood. But um, you know, I think I think if we have in the learning that we take from the last decade, as part of it, the knowledge transfer. You know, one one thing that blew my mind when I heard it, you wouldn't you wouldn't know otherwise. Um every bank in the world looks at these deals. They're so big. The number of zeros on that figure, it goes across the desk of these decision makers. Will I or won't I? Will I go in? And some do, some don't. But the sheer scale of it, I think it's so uh so monumental. I'd love to get your thoughts on what the journey ahead is. How do you prioritize? How do you build a team? How do you find the people that you trust to go and build it with you for you? Do you just hand it over at some point to someone else? Is that how this works? What's the future?

SPEAKER_00 39:40

Yeah, there's, I mean, you basically just asked how do you develop a project? But I'm happy to uh happy to share if uh your viewers

How Entrepreneurs Build Mega Projects

SPEAKER_00 39:50

find that interesting. I mean, personally, I think they do. I think entrepreneurship is the single coolest thing you could ever commit your life to. Uh, let me talk a little bit about my personal journey here that might be of interest. So I mentioned previously I dropped out of UBC Law School at one point uh to go down to Silicon Valley. And I'm from the Fraser Valley. I was born and raised in Chilliwack, multiple generations of uh family in in Chilliwack. I grew up next to Chiam Reserve. Um, have some dear friends um beyond that nation. And the fact of indigenous um Canada relations was not lost on me from a very young age, um, living in a community that was, let's use the word, essentially segregated. And uh, of course, that is not the world we live in today. It's remarkable from growing up in the in the 70s in my small British Columbia community to where First Nations live separate and apart from the broader community, to see how in the city of Chilliwac today you shop at and go to the movie theater in the center of town on indigenous land, on uh in and use infrastructure that was jointly developed with the local nations. And so growing in that community helped to, I think, shape some of my thinking around this, because certainly living separate and apart from people is not the solution, especially when they're your dear friends, uh family members in some cases. And so I care a lot about getting this right personally, um, because at the absolute most micro level, it's about relationships with people that I know and care about. And I don't see them as different from me. They're my community members, they're my they're my friends, the people I attended church with as a kid that I went to school with, that I played on sport teams with. Um, and by the way, just a shout out to our little uh local baseball team. When I was uh 11 years old, we won the Jolac Mosquito um division. I'm still super proud of that because uh we had the single best um um athlete in our community was a guy named Louis Edwards. Um Louis was a kid that could play baseball, soccer, basketball. He was like the best athlete in our town. And we always won everything because uh we had Louis Edwards on our team. And so I think about that a lot because um if you have an indigenous uh player on your team like that, it can really change your trajectory. And so we were a our our little community. Um we we were able to punch above our weight because we were able to harness that human capital by bringing that entire community together. Um and and now you see that in Chilliwack, which is really a success story, not without problems, not without challenges still, but really a success story and a model uh for British Columbia and for the nation. And so though that experience really obviously influenced my life, deeply influenced my life. Um, but there was a piece missing, which was when you grew up in small town British Columbia, you don't think about going to Tokyo once a month to negotiate LNG deals. I mean, my parents were not university educated, for example. Um, and so it's quite an interesting journey from that small town to the other side of the world. And the part I think that was really, really instructive for me was when I went to Silicon Valley, and there's a whole story about that, we can get into it some other time, but I didn't realize that young people could build stuff. I was 24 years old at the time. I had no idea that you could. Change the world. I mean, young people talk about that. And activism is important. Young people getting involved in their communities and politics is important. Don't get me wrong. I think that that's wonderful. But what I saw as a 24-year-old in Silicon Valley, when I say changing the world, I mean literally creating new things that didn't exist before, that revolutionized the way that we talk to each other, that we engage with one another, governments with business. And so I'm talking about the early days of the internet. And I was there for it. I had a front row seat and it blew my mind. And so I came home to BC and finished my law degree after September 11th. And that was that horrific challenge. It kind of blew out the first uh dot-com boom. But I came back with an experience that has stayed with me ever since and obviously propels me uh forward every single day because I know that if you align human capital with a great idea that's important and that has can have an impact, you will have success. But you don't do it alone. That's the other thing that I learned. In Silicon Valley, there's this myth of like the super founder, right? You see the super founders all the time. Hey, guess what? Teams build those companies.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

But you still have these Zuckerbergs. Is there an opportunity for a young graduate like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk early in the career to come into Canadian energy and do something that blows people's minds?

SPEAKER_00 45:46

Yeah, I mean, we have those success stories in this country. I think of a guy like Murray Edwards. Murray is very low profile, but I mean he built CNRL. It's a guy. He was a little bit of Canadian natural resources.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:59

Catch up Canadian natural resources, yeah. I mean, he's he's a lawyer doing energy deals. But you realize there's something bigger here. Something that Canadians don't realize is that most of the major oil production in this country is now managed by large Canadian companies. The rest of the world left the oil sands. The Canadian entrepreneurs, those of us that actually care about this country and building this country, they stayed and figured it out. And so back to my point about teams and why I brought up the fact that our sports teams uh in my little community often won a lot more than we lost. I'm not even gonna humble brag about it. We were the best uh baseball team uh in Chilwak when I was a kid. Um, and that was because we had we were able to harness human capital. And it was human capital that wasn't capital you would normally necessarily um have realized it was underutilized. It was it was underdeveloped human capital. In this case, it was indigenous kids and white kids getting together, playing on a sports team and kicking butt. Well, hey, guess what? That's what we're planning on doing here again. That's what we've already done with Frog Lake. And I really care about that because it's the model from my small community to my company and ultimately to the world, how Canada can compete and win on a global stage. And so, no, we don't need the Mark Zuckerberg's and the Elon Musks. That's Canadians are allergic to that. By the way, Elon Musk is Canadian, and it's a reminder to everybody. You know, he had to leave, right? Or he did leave. I don't know. I don't know if he had to. I wish he'd stayed in some ways. But look, this country's history is one of a kind of collective action which is kind of unique. It's a little bit different than our friends to the south. And this idea, and that comes obviously from our early history and right back to the plains of Abraham and all the challenges of the building of this country from the beginning of our history, it forced us to collaborate and and reach consensus where people had very strong differences of opinion, very different histories. In some cases, those are some tragic histories, but we figured it out. Well, guess what? What I've just said or described is also the story of building an early stage company. It's really, really hard. I want your guests to understand, or your your viewers to understand this, too. Like going building an early stage company is not a smart economic or financial decision. So I came back to Canada after my Silicon Valley stint and I finished UBC Law School and then an article that Blake Castle's ingrade in. And if I had just stayed at Blake's, um I would be a heck of a lot better off than from a financial perspective, than where I ended up trying to build early stage companies. Um we'll see in the end um whether or not that's true. But certainly for many of my colleagues now who are mid-career and making have very comfortable lives, it's perfectly rational to stay in a large law firm and work for the rest of your life and and and save lots of money and kind of carry on. It's not necessarily a smart thing to do to start a company. But back to it, why do you do this? Because I saw young people change the world. There was no internet, and then there was. That act of creation, it's what propels the human story. And for Canada, what is gonna solve this energy challenge and truly build an energy superpower is for Canadians to start companies, lots and lots of companies. And by the way, most of them are gonna fail. And instead of punishing people that take risks, as a society, we should say, hey, that's really cool that you tried that. So back to the Silicon Valley example. I I love Canada and I love Canadians. Um, but I laugh sometimes because I had a conversation with uh with with uh remain nameless, it doesn't matter. But I had a conversation uh about sort of some of these things we've been talking about today. And this this prominent person asked me, like, well, why would you do that? Why would you quit your job? Why would you quit your your promising legal career to go start companies where there's a far letter, far greater likelihood of failure than success. And it was interesting because if I had asked that question in Silicon Valley, they'd look at you like, what's wrong with you? Of course you should start a company. It's what what we do here. Um but it comes down to this. It and really this the tie-through is that I talked about um about some space stuff. And uh one of my co-founders, Wade Larson, uh is the founder of Wanacana's um coolest space companies, a company called Earth Daily Analytics. And it was interesting because I was talking about his project with someone, and I said, you know, it'd be really cool if we did this on the moon. It was just one of those kind of comments that you have over coffee. And I think we're talking about data centers or something. And they said, Why would you do that? In Silicon Valley, if you said, hey, I think we should build a data center on the moon, you know what the reply would be, Stuart? How do we do that? It's the first thing that they say in response.

SPEAKER_01 52:07

Is that a very different answer than you'd get in Canada, which would be you're out of your mind.

SPEAKER_00 52:13

You're out of your mind. So, Bob, why would you build an energy hub in Prince Rupert with First Nations? If I was in Silicon Valley and I told people I was doing that, they'd be first thing they'd be like, wow, that's super ambitious, that's cool. So, how do you do that? And here's the thing that I've learned over the last 12 years in early stage energy development. There's a formula, there's a plan, you can educate, you can learn how to do that. It involves mentorship, it involves all levels of government, it involves partnership. But yeah, you can learn how to build stuff. And guess what? It's not rocket science. At the end of the day, honestly, what we're doing is a real estate project.

The Mindset Shift Canada Needs

SPEAKER_01 53:00

Do you feel that there is a return to the heaviness of things after so many years of the cloud thing, everything was lightweight and effortless. We would just expand the amount of memory available. And we're continuing to do that. But suddenly, energy, critical minerals, things that are hard to get that that you can hold or look at, have to become the thing. And you've been in both those worlds.

SPEAKER_00 53:32

Yeah, it's it's interesting. So I you've got to get back to kind of first principles. Start with why. Why is that heaviness? Why are we in this epoch that we're in right now? Well, because some of these challenges, like I mentioned previously, I am not a partisan person. It's neither right nor left with me. Um, it's just evidence-based. And if you look at it, political polarization happened in the United States because two things happened. Number one was the rise of China and the hauling out of industrial and middle class working families. And I grew up in one of those communities. I know those impacts. Don't get me started on the liberals taking the uh Chilwak forces base out of uh Chillic in 1993, gutting that economy. Um these things have real impacts. You lose a factory in a small town in Ontario, you're decimating human lives. So that was challenge number one, and the politics followed that, obviously. And then two is the rise of technology. So the world's become more atomized, we've become more individualistic, we've become more lonely. We're all at the end of devices by ourselves, typing away instead of talking to one another. These are radical changes in our society. But back to entrepreneurship, it brings and gives your life meaning. Building stuff matters. And again, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to do it. I mean, I'm a dumb guy from Chilliwack. So all you need to know is that when somebody comes to you with an idea, your framing needs to be not one of judgment, that's a dumb idea, but rather one of curiosity. Well, how would we do that? And that is the change that needs to happen in Canadian society. But it gets back to it. Part of the reason why, and again, human beings are rational. Why do Canadians be respond that way? Because there's a social cost in failure. I'm talking about a $15.7 billion LNG project. I am acutely aware of what happens if this project is not successful from a reputational perspective. It really sucks. But you can't think like that. The only thing you can do is say, tune out the critics, focus on the job at hand, recognize it. It starts with a site. You talk to the people who are most affected by it, who are the rights and title holders in the region, First Nations. You find a solution to resolving that problem. Usually that's partnership. Human beings are, there's lots of scientific literature on this notion of justice, which is fairness, and fairness is still 50-50. You learn that in kindergarten, right? Do a 50-50 deal with the local First Nation, raise some capital, and then you execute. So where does capital go? Well, capital goes to places where it can generate a return. How do you generate outside returns? Well, business is pretty simple. I grew up working with my mom and dad in our small business, and it was your revenue needs to exceed your cost. Again, I'm a lawyer, Stuart. I know. Like took a whole advanced degree to figure that one out, right? You know, part of my sarcasm. So if you can generate outside risk outsized returns, you're gonna have capital from around the world coming to you to invest. So instead of punishing success in this country, like we do, through things like our tax system, through systems that make it difficult to start a business, these are fundamental policy challenges. If we create preconditions for people to build through human flourishing, by taking away obstacles so that they can fully, truly become themselves, and then unleash that human energy toward a common goal, we're gonna win. And in Canada, we have a ton of natural resources, and those those natural resources are not resources that we need to be embarrassed by. Oil is not a dirty word. I love oil and gas. But climate change is a real thing, and in and extincting the human population because we burn too much too many hydrocarbons, the result is that human beings can't live on the planet is obviously insanity. So what do you do? You look to mitigate harms. Guess what? There's technology that can reduce those harms. LNG is a great example. You take natural gas, which is in many cases, you know, you see, like recently looking at an issue with seabed uh methane escape. I mean, methane escapes from the ocean floor every day naturally. Well, hey, guess what? If you were to capture that and display something like coal in a thermal power plant to reduce overall CO2 emissions by half, where is the moral issue in doing that? It's the opposite. There's a moral imperative to go out and do and do that.

SPEAKER_01 59:35

Well, I think there has been a swing. We see it in public opinion that Canadians right now are more open to building those big projects. There is possibly uh a literacy gap in some areas because schools have not been uh telling the story of Canadian natural resources or uh indeed of energy balance for quite a long time now. And I think that's had why not? Yes. You tell me why not, Bob.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:02

Well, one starts to wonder.

Geopolitics, Critics, And Final Vision

SPEAKER_00 1:00:04

So first thing to remember is that as Canadian energy developers, we compete with the world. And I gotta tell you, there aren't necessarily pure motives everywhere you go on Earth. And Canadians are a sensible people. It's a nasty world out there. Let's go. It's a nasty world out there. I mean, Sue, you've done yeoman's work explaining the relationship between certain advocacy groups in Canada and direct competitors to the Canadian energy industry. And you just you ask yourself, why?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:46

Why don't we push back harder? I mean, it it's hardly surprising that we do have state actors doing everything they can do to meet with success. If that means tripping up the opponent, getting sharp elbows into the corners, of course they're going to do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:00

Right. And you sound like a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist if you say but if you get if you actually sit down and look at where does the money come from for advocacy in some cases, from our direct competitors. That's a fact. You have to wonder, you have to wonder why. And so, yeah, Canadians need to recognize that the world is actually kind of a scary place sometimes. There are bad state actors out there. It was just remarkable to me. I was in Seoul yesterday, and you just think like 80 kilometers away over those mountains, there's enough artillery there that would make the Ukraine-Russian war look like you know a party. And the people of South Korea bravely and nobly lived their days and went out and built the world's tenth largest economy despite those facts, without any energy, by the way. And then you look at what we do at home and you say, hmm, I think we can do better. But again, it's not to be critical. The way to do that is to give Canadians the courage to go out and create. And the way you do that is create those preconditions. The first point is what Canadians should say when somebody tries to do something super hard, audacious, something like this project. How would you do that? What is it gonna take? What problems do you need to solve? Instead of immediately knee-jerk saying, well, that's a dumb idea. We do have tall poppy syndrome in this country still. I suspect it's partly because of our Scots heritage in some ways. I know I've got a size.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:51

You know, that we're gonna have to leave something on the table for next time you come to power struggle because uh we could possibly go on for quite a long time with this fascinating conversation. I'd like to just ramp off with a little bit of a prediction from you. You've launched this audacious thing. Maybe there's people out there saying you're out of your mind. I uh I applaud those who are asking you, how are you gonna solve this? How are you gonna do it? And that should be the question. So um as you go forward, I I hope that you're you're mostly meeting up with people like that who even want to be part of getting you there. Because this is a project that will take uh a huge amount of collaboration to get across a finish line.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:33

Yeah, so you know who are asking those questions? How now? Our First Nations leaders. Right. That's been one of the coolest things that I've encountered as we've launched the project. First Nations leaders saying, how do we get involved in this project? What are going to be, what are the benefits going to be from it? How can I use the wealth generated by this project to build schools and infrastructure for my people? How can we build basketball and baseball teams that will compete with kids in Chilliwack? Sadly, they're not going to beat the kids from Chilliwack because they're still the best. Um but teasing aside, the answer is going to be through the development of these natural resources in partnership with Canadian entrepreneurs and First Nations. Like that's the goal. But I'll say this maybe to leave it here, Stuart. When you get into the arena, of course, there's going to be critics, and that's okay. No problem. Bring it on. But the way that you win is with people, and I'm super blessed to have a group of co-founders who have had my back all the way along here. There are actually a dozen of us who have founding shares in the company, which is not normal, just to be clear. It's usually two or three folks. We've got a dozen. But I'm proud of that fact. And those co-founders, they range in experience from deep engineering talent. We have a group of co-founders that are that led a project development team, one of the largest EPCs in the world. They've developed and delivered $30 billion worth of projects over the course of their careers, which is an amazing asset. We have First Nations leaders that have founded the company with us. Uh, Capital Markets team, our chair, uh Aaron Campbell, she built Canada's first female-only, um, like woman-led um investment broker dealer, which is a remarkable thing. She did that on her own as an entrepreneur. I mentioned my colleague Wade Larson started a state at like this low earth observation uh satellite company. So these are remarkably talented people, and they all kind of came together for the single purpose, which is to try to build this project. And yeah, for six years there have been twists and turns and challenges and lots of failure, and you know, many times when uh we didn't get a salary for a long period of time. And we we persisted, we kept with it, and here we are today. And I think that resilience and partnership with First Nations and those skills will allow this project to succeed in the end.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:19

Robert Delamar, thank you for coming to Power Struggle. Incredible story. I'll be tracking it over time. Kanata LNG. Congratulations.