The Canadian province has confirmed that Woodside has submitted draft "Application Information Requirements", and public comments will be sought until April 4 on potential effects - environmental, economic, social, heritage and health - that the proposed export project might cause.

That means Woodside submitted the AIR ahead of time, as the company said last September it aimed to have it finalised by mid-2016.

Woodside will update the community on the development at the open house, to be held on March 10 at the North Coast Convention Centre.

The next stage in the process will see Woodside progressing towards receiving an environmental assessment certificate, which involves completing the studies, compiling the information outlined in the AIR and preparing and submitting an application to the Environmental Assessment Office.

"As we progress the EA and work on concept definition to understand the upstream gas supply and confirm potential pipeline route options, any decision to proceed with an LNG development at Grassy Point remains subject to a variety of approvals," Woodside said.

This involves completing the studies and compiling the information outlined in the AIR and preparing and submitting an Application to the EAO.

Grassy Point is located on provincially administered Crown land near Prince Rupert, north of the Kitimat project that Woodside bought into when it purchased half the Chevron Corporation-operated project from Apache Corporation.

The National Energy Board granted Woodside a license early last year to export up to 20 million tonnes per annum of natural gas for up to 25 years at Grassy Point, though the company has no gas or plant for the project.

It is expected to take gas from the wider Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin.

The project would be implemented in two phases with an initial production capacity of 6-15MMtpa of LNG, and the ability to ramp up to 20MMtpa.

The first phase includes developing supporting infrastructure like jetties and a materials offloading facility, power generation, water supply, sanitary waste management, site access roads and workforce accommodation.

Phase two is installing the additional LNG infrastructure to increase capacity to the 20MMtpa mark.

Grassy Point is a peninsula adjacent to Laz Kw'alaams (Port Simpson), about 30km north of Prince Rupert on the Tsimpsean Peninsula.

Grassy Point is the fourth of the major proposals for the Canadian North Coast still in motion, with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency set to complete its comment period on Petronas' Pacific NorthWest LNG proposal on March 11 then hand it over to the federal environment minister.

The final investment decision was made on Pacific NorthWest LNG last June.

The Aurora LNG proposal for Digby Island (a joint venture between CNOOC's Nexen Energy and Inpex) and ExxonMobil's WCC LNG proposal for Tuck Inlet are both in various stages of their consultation process, while Shell's Prince Rupert LNG project was put on hold in 2014.

While British Columbia has 19 LNG projects proposed, it is generally believed that only about three or four projects have a realistic chance of getting up amid a global LNG glut expected to last at least another five years and an oil glut hitting the bottom lines of operators.