As natural gas pipeline proponents queue up to seek environmental, regulatory, and finally, economic approvals, members of the Regional District of Bulkley Nechako (RDBN) wonder how much the environment and the people of North Central B.C. can sustain.
Neil Milne, assistant director of the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) project for TransCanada PipeLines Limited, made a presentation to the RDBN board on June 20, 2013. The proposed 750 Kilometre pipeline would be designed, built, owned and operated by TransCanada. The pipeline would deliver natural gas from extraction fields in North East B.C. to a proposed liquid natural gas facility on Lelu Island, within the District of Port Edward.
Progress Energy, a Canadian company wholly owned by Malaysian energy giant Petronas, is footing the bill for the development of the pipeline. It is still early days for the pipeline which has yet to apply for its provincial environmental assessment.
If all assessment hurdles are cleared, project construction would get underway in 2015 and possibly be completed and in service by as early as 2018. During construction, the project would employ 6000 people in 13 different work camps along the pipeline right-of-way.
Once in service, the pipeline itself would not generate much employment - approximately 40 full-time employees could oversee the entire route once it is in operation - but it would generate large royalty and tax revenues.
The province could expect to receive up to a quarter billion dollars in gas revenues annually, and regional districts along the right away would divy up between 20 and 25 million dollars annually in tax revenue.
Regional District of Bulkely Nechako board members have entertained many visits from energy giants with news of their pipeline proposals. Conversation and questioning around the board table immediately turned to what Taylor Bachrach, RDBN director and Smithers mayor, termed ‘the conversation we’re not having.’
“[Regarding] the question of how many of these [pipelines] we could see, the only threshold you mention are the availability of reserves and the ability to generate the power to run the LNG facilities,” said Bachrach. “The other key thresholds are the airsheds that the LNG facilities are in - at what point do you start seeing major human health effects from burning the gas [to run the facility] - and at what point do we cross the threshold regarding carbon emissions?”
Another conversation not typically on the table is the loss of timber through the massive clear-cutting required to create pipeline right-of-ways. Although numbers were not immediately available for the PRGT project, TransCanada’s other project - Coastal GasLink - would require the removal of 20 million dollars worth of harvestable timber along the 50 metre wide right-of-way.
In addition to the value of the timber harvested, and perhaps burned due to the remoteness of the pipeline route, there is the potential reduction to provincially mandated annual allowable cuts (AAC). Mills in the region rely on AACs for their supply, but the harvest level determinations are based on available timber, so any healthy timber taken out of a supply area - for whatever reason - can mean a reduced AAC for mill dependent, local economies.
Rob MacDougall, RDBN director and Fort St. James mayor, upon quick calculation pointed out that even if only half the timber along the right-of-way were otherwise harvestable, it would represent enough wood supply to run a medium size mill for a year.
“There’s a huge competition for timber throughout our timber supply areas,” MacDougall said. “For forestry-based communities, this is front-and-centre.”
Bill Miller, RDBN director and chairperson, elaborated that multiple pipeline proposals each taking different routes from north to west could have a multiplier effect on the amount of timber permanently removed from the working forest supply base.