A regulatory order over black smoke spewing from LNG Canada’s Kitimat facility is the latest development in a months-long pattern of excessive flaring that has left residents and health experts alarmed—and largely in the dark.

The British Columbia Energy Regulator (BCER) ordered [pdf] LNG Canada in late April to document all black smoke flaring events, identify the causes, and implement corrective measures by October. Black smoke contains particulate matter and unburned hydrocarbons, and must be avoided “except for periods not to exceed a total of five minutes during any two consecutive hours,” according to the regulator’s flaring guidelines. If black smoke is observed above this threshold, the BCER must be notified.

But on January 6, the LNG Canada facility, owned by a consortium consisting mostly of international fossil companies, emitted black smoke for more than seven hours during non-emergency conditions, while a second event the following day lasted more than two hours. That means LNG Canada is failing to comply with condition 38 of its amended permit, which allows the company to emit no black smoke at all during normal operations, and no more than 15 minutes’ worth in any two-hour period during process upsets—already more permissive than the BCER’s own general guideline of five minutes.

That guideline “reflects general, evolving recommended best practices rather than a mandated requirement,” the regulator wrote in a May 5 email to The Mix. The specifics of LNG-Canada’s permit on black smoke were “developed by BC Energy Regulator technical staff in relation to the specific design, operational context, and risk profile of the facility at the time of permitting.”

The BCER order mandating LNG Canada to record and correct its black smoke events comes almost four months after the regulator first identified the smoke problem—and it only addresses a visible symptom of a deeper problem.

Documents obtained through a freedom of information request and reviewed by The Narwhal reveal that LNG Canada has known about a malfunction in its flare stack since at least April 2025. That’s when it disclosed an “integrity concern” involving the stack to the BCER, explaining it would take three years to fix. LNG Canada—which is co-owned by Shell, Malaysian state fossil Petronas, state-owned PetroChina, Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp, and the Korea Gas Corporation—also told the regulator it would route additional gas to the stack to “help mitigate identified integrity risks.”

But that news was never made public, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) writes in a release. The scale of the flaring is only now coming into focus thanks to documents obtained separately by Laura Minet, head of the Clean Air Lab at the University of Victoria. Minet found that flaring exceeded permitted levels by 40 to 45 times on average between October 2025 and January 2026, and by more than 60 times in December alone.

“The intensity and duration of flaring events—sometimes producing flames as tall as a 26-story building, or up to 90 metres—are a growing community health concern in Kitimat,” CAPE says, adding that the consortium tends to issue public flare notices only after the fact. “Notifying people after a flaring event does not allow them to protect themselves,” said Tim Takaro, a Simon Fraser University professor emeritus trained in occupational and environmental medicine, quoted in the CAPE release.

The BCER maintains that air quality readings around Kitimat don’t indicate any public or environmental safety risk due to the flaring. But at least one local health professional says he’s hearing something different on the ground.

“Since LNG Canada began operations, dark plumes from flaring over my town have seemed constant, and I’m seeing the impact locally,” Kitimat-based registered nurse Ankur Patel, a member of the Canadian Association of Nurses for the Environment, told CAPE.

“I’ve heard first-hand from residents whose symptoms worsen during heavy flaring events, and require more medications to breathe comfortably, with seniors and people with heart and lung disease being particularly vulnerable,” he said. People “deserve a regulatory system that protects them.”

CAPE adds that every flaring event releases a “toxic mix of air pollutants” including particulate matter, black carbon, nitrogen and sulphur oxides, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). VOCs include benzene, a carcinogen so potent that “no safe exposure level has been found.” Benzene is neither routinely measured nor reported at LNG facilities in British Columbia, CAPE writes, and there has been no comprehensive study of the human health risks posed by these facilities.

In the CAPE press release, Takaro expressed concerns about whether the regulator is monitoring and reporting hazardous air pollution from the LNG Canada facility. In an interview with The Energy Mix, he said there is also uncertainty about exactly what toxins are in the black smoke.

The BCER directed The Mix to B.C.’s air quality index, which provides hourly readings of key pollutants, including nitrous dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2), ozone (O3),and small particulate matter (PM2.5). Examining the air quality data at the Haul Road air monitoring station, the closest to LNG- Canada’s facility, during a planned flaring event that occurred between May 5 and 7 does reveal spikes in the levels of all pollutants. But levels in every case remain far below the mandated provincial limits. 

On the matter of benzene,  the regulator said that the “primary source”  of the toxin are incinerator stacks that are distinct from the facility flares. The regulator further notes that the facility’s air waste discharge permit mandates “quarterly measurement of incinerator exhaust gas composition,” and most recent testing by LNG-Canada indicates the rate of benzene emissions in incinerator exhaust is “well below” BCER’s mandated limits.

That said, incomplete combustion of natural gas is known to produce benzene, so the toxin could be present in the black smoke—the constituents of which remain to be identified. 

Meanwhile, other affected communities are speaking up, with Terrace now the fourth municipality in B.C. to ask the province to conduct an independent cumulative health impact assessment of the natural gas industry, CBC News reports. Hazelton, Squamish, and Dawson Creek have all made the same request.

Editor’s Note: This article was updated May 6 with information addressing the concerns around air quality near the LNG Canada facility, as provided by the BCER. A second update on May 12 reflects BCER’s explanation for why LNG-Canada’s black smoke permissions appear to exceed the regulator’s own guidelines.