Malahat Nation reaffirmed its support for a liquefied natural gas facility in its territory in the wake of Canada conditionally green-lighting a project on BC’s northwest coast.

Shortly after the federal government announced conditional environmental approval for the massive Petronas-led Pacific NorthWest LNG project in late September, Malahat Nation issued a statement about the LNG plant that’s proposed for nation-owned industrial lands on Saanich Inlet.

Malahat’s statement outlines ways in which the Steelhead LNG plant would be less damaging to the environment than the Pacific NorthWest LNG project.

“It’s important to point out that the scope and scale of Steelhead’s proposed Malahat LNG project is significantly smaller than the Pacific NorthWest LNG project,” the statement said. “Steelhead LNG is planning to build an at-shore facility moored to the foreshore which will reduce impacts compared to a land-based facility, like Pacific NorthWest LNG.”

However BC Premier Christy Clark told the Victoria Times-Colonist newspaper that the Steelhead project is more complicated than Petronas in other ways. She said one major reason was that it proposes moving gas through the United States.

“The Petronas project, which has taken so long, was a lot simpler, even when it comes to approvals,” she said. “The Steelhead project is going to be very complicated. I would say that one’s too early to call.”

There is no word on when a decision will be made on the Steelhead project, but Clark told the newspaper that it is a “very, very, very long way off.”

Meanwhile, the $36-billion Pacific NorthWest LNG project must now meet 190 legally-binding conditions before it gets the final go-ahead.