We may earn a commission if you sign up through links on this site. Operators we partner with are marked and may appear first. Every operator shown is registered in your province.

Hard Hat North Pipeline Work Guide
Menu

A Worker’s Guide to Coastal GasLink Employment

Coastal GasLink’s mass-hiring construction phase is over: the pipeline has been operational since 2025, so current jobs are a much smaller operations-and-maintenance team, not the thousands of spread positions from the build. Here’s what changed, and what employment looks like now.

What CGL is, and where the project stands today

Coastal GasLink is a roughly 670-kilometre natural gas pipeline running from northeastern BC to the LNG Canada export facility in Kitimat. As of this writing, the pipeline is operational and complete - it enabled Canada’s first LNG export shipment in June 2025 and now moves natural gas to the Kitimat liquefaction facility on an ongoing basis, with the operator noting potential future capacity expansion through added compression rather than new pipe in the ground (Coastal GasLink - official project site, accessed 2026-09-07).

That status matters enormously for anyone researching jobs: the mass-hiring construction phase - the one that generated well over 25,000 full-time-equivalent jobs in BC across the build - is over (Coastal GasLink, accessed 2026-09-07). If a job posting, forum thread, or old blog post is describing thousands of open spread positions on CGL specifically, treat it as outdated unless it’s dated within the last few months.

What roles existed during construction, for context

During active construction, CGL ran multiple spreads simultaneously across northern BC, employing the full range of pipeline trades: journeyman welders, helpers, pipeline and sideboom operators, inspectors (including X-ray/NDT techs and environmental inspectors), labourers, and spread-level supervision, alongside camp and catering staff supporting the workforce. Pay during that period followed the same general bands as other large pipeline builds - see /wages/ for current role-by-role estimates, since the underlying rate structure for these trades hasn’t fundamentally changed even though CGL-specific construction hiring has wound down.

CGL construction was also notable for the scale of local and Indigenous contracting involved - more than $1.8 billion in contracts were awarded to local and Indigenous businesses over the life of the build (Coastal GasLink, accessed 2026-09-07), which is worth knowing if you’re specifically interested in Indigenous-owned contractor pathways into pipeline work more broadly, not just this one project.

What employment looks like now: operations and maintenance

With construction complete, the workforce need on the pipeline itself has shifted from a large, temporary construction crew to a much smaller, permanent operations-and-maintenance team - the kind of ongoing role structure typical of any in-service pipeline: control room and operations staff, maintenance technicians, integrity and inspection roles (including periodic digs and inline inspection follow-up), and environmental monitoring. TC Energy, which operates and holds an interest in CGL-related infrastructure, describes its overall workforce across operations, engineering, and projects rather than construction-specific hiring at this stage (TC Energy - Careers, accessed 2026-09-07).

Practically, that means: if you’re looking for construction-scale hiring blocks like the ones CGL ran a few years ago, look toward newer or still-active builds - NGTL expansion segments, Trans Mountain-related maintenance work, or new LNG-adjacent pipeline projects as they’re announced - rather than CGL itself. If you’re interested in a longer-term, less nomadic operations or maintenance career, a completed pipeline like CGL is a more realistic target than an active construction spread, and it’s worth checking the operator’s own careers page directly for current openings rather than relying on secondhand hiring rumours. See /jobs/ for how to read a posting and figure out which phase of a project it’s actually hiring for.

Camp life during the build, if you’re weighing older accounts

Workers who went through CGL’s construction phase describe a fairly standard large-spread camp experience: remote lodging in northern BC, rotational schedules, and the usual camp WiFi limitations that come with serving a large workforce off one shared connection. See /camps/ and /rotations/ for what that generally looks like across pipeline projects. Off-shift downtime in a camp like that is limited to shared common areas and whatever the connection allows - for workers looking at regulated, off-shift-only options for an occasional evening, licensed operators are compared by province at /compare/ca/; it’s off-shift only, never on company networks or devices.

FAQ

Is Coastal GasLink still hiring for construction roles? No, not at the scale it once was. The pipeline is complete and operational as of 2025, so the large-scale construction hiring blocks that defined the project through the early 2020s have wound down. Current needs are for a much smaller operations and maintenance workforce.

What happened to all the workers from CGL construction? Most pipeline construction crews move on to the next active project once a build wraps - that’s the normal pattern in this industry. Workers who built CGL have generally moved to other active pipeline, LNG, or industrial construction work rather than staying with the completed asset.

Where should I look for pipeline construction jobs now that CGL is finished? Check current postings for other active or upcoming pipeline and LNG-related builds directly through contractor and operator careers pages, since hiring needs shift project to project. See /jobs/ for how hiring blocks are typically structured and timed across the industry.