Pembina's decade-plus Jordan Cove LNG push ended in a 2021 walkaway and $1.6bn writedown

Jordan Cove was an LNG export terminal proposed at Coos Bay, Oregon, fed by the 229-mile Pacific Connector pipeline. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had denied the project a license in 2016, saying its backers had not shown enough commercial support. Veresen, a Calgary midstream company, kept developing it and folded it into Pembina Pipeline in their combination, which the Financial Post described as a $9.7 billion deal.

The regulatory wall never broke. In May 2019 Oregon denied the project's key state certification, and in January 2020 Jordan Cove withdrew its removal-fill permit application rather than face denial, after four extensions and repeated requests for missing information. FERC re-issued its authorization in March 2020, complete with eminent domain powers, but construction remained contingent on state permits that never came. The company had no signed LNG sale agreements, only memoranda of understanding with Asian buyers.

In its fourth-quarter 2020 results, Pembina recognized $1.6 billion of non-cash after-tax impairments across its investments in Jordan Cove, the Ruby Pipeline and the CKPC petrochemical joint venture. CEO Mick Dilger wrote that COVID-19, changing commodity dynamics and 'evolving political priorities' had forced the company to acknowledge the impaired values, while insisting the projects still made sense when de-risked.

The end came a year later. In April 2021 Pembina paused the project; on December 1, 2021, responding to a FERC request to clarify its intentions, it filed to withdraw the authorizations, writing that applicants had 'decided not to move forward with the Project', citing the difficulty of obtaining state permits. The fight had lasted more than a decade and the terminal was never built.

$1.6bn of after-tax impairments in 2020 across Jordan Cove, Ruby Pipeline and the CKPC petrochemical JV; the terminal never sold a molecule of LNG

Commercial support never materialized: FERC had denied the license in 2016 precisely because there were no firm LNG sale agreements, and none were ever signed.

The regulatory risk was knowable in advance — Oregon agencies had repeatedly flagged missing information, denied certifications and fought the project through multiple legal rounds.

Merger logic treated Jordan Cove as upside, but Pembina inherited a project whose federal license had already been rejected once and whose state path was visibly broken.

Escalation outlasted the evidence: Pembina kept spending on easements and permitting for five more years after the 2016 denial instead of writing the position off early.

A project that cannot get permits and cannot sign customers is not a growth asset, however large the map says it is; buying it inside a merger just moves the writedown onto a new balance sheet.

Pembina asked FERC to withdraw the project's authorizations in December 2021 and refocused on its Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin pipeline franchise. It did not give up on LNG: in June 2021 it had already partnered with the Haisla Nation on the proposed Cedar LNG project in British Columbia, a floating facility on its own side of the border. Oregon landowners and tribes who had fought eminent domain for over a decade saw the threat formally lifted.