North American crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids (NGL) producers depend on efficient, competitive access to export infrastructure to realize the full value of their production. On the West Coast, that access is currently constrained by a de facto monopoly: AltaGas controls every VLGC capable LPG export terminal serving the Pacific Northwest, spanning Ridley Island and REEF in British Columbia and Ferndale in Washington State, along with significant upstream infrastructure, including pipelines, gas plants, and fractionation assets, that feeds them. As a result, both Canadian and US producers and shippers seeking to reach Asian LPG markets are effectively required to route supply through AltaGas controlled infrastructure end to end, with no meaningful alternative path to tidewater for NGLs produced in Western Canada or the US Pacific Northwest.

This concentration has real, measurable consequences for producers across the region, not just for individual companies. As one illustrative example, a midstream developer planned to invest approximately $450 million in a pipeline, fractionator, and rail terminal near Chetwynd, British Columbia, to bring additional LPG supply to export markets. The developer was unable to secure third party access to AltaGas's terminal for supply not processed through AltaGas owned infrastructure in B.C. Without a credible, competitive egress path off the West Coast, the project could not demonstrate bankable market access to lenders and lost its financing in Q4 2024. This is not an isolated setback; it reflects a structural barrier that discourages capital formation and limits export optionality for producers throughout the basin, regardless of which side of the border their supply originates on.

This matters more, not less, as commodity fundamentals strengthen. Stronger crude oil, natural gas, and NGL pricing naturally drives increased production activity across Western Canada and the US Rockies and Pacific Northwest. That upstream growth will require proportionate egress capacity to reach export markets; without it, producers will be left with fewer options and weaker netbacks, and new supply will have nowhere efficient to go. Additional, competitively accessible export infrastructure is not a nice to have; it is a prerequisite for North American producers to capture the full value of a stronger pricing environment.

As long as a single company controls the only VLGC capable export terminals on the West Coast, on both sides of the border, North American producers will remain structurally limited in their ability to access global markets, negotiate competitive terms, and attract the capital needed to grow production. Trigon Pacific Terminals' proposed $750 million LPG export project demonstrates that alternative infrastructure is achievable and would provide the open, third party access the current system does not.

On behalf of North American oil and gas producers seeking free market access for NGL export, we urge the federal government to use the tools available to it, including its authority over the designation and management of priority commodities and the governance of port lands, to ensure fair, non discriminatory terminal access. A re evaluation of AltaGas's effective exclusivity over LPG export access, in coordination with the Province of British Columbia, would materially change the investment calculus for new entrants and for the broader North American NGL sector. Canada does not have a shortage of infrastructure capability; it has a shortage of competitive access, and correcting that would unlock investment currently sitting on the sidelines and benefit producers across the continent.