West Coast Olefins faces competition
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PRINCE GEORGE — The head of West Coast Olefins is heading to the BC Environmental Assessment offices next week to make his case for a petrochemical plant in Prince George. And there is some urgency to his trip.
“Yesterday, Enbridge announced a project where they would take the liquids out in Chetwynd, up in Station Two. They’re going to build a 140 kilometre pipeline and go east with those liquids to Taylor, BC. At that location, they would have access to pipelines that would take that product back to Fort Saskatchewan where there’s fractionation facilities,” he says. “If they take the liquids out, obviously, they’re not going to be in the pipe when it gets to Prince George.”
It would make a plant in Prince George moot.
That revelation comes one month after James was in town with local dignitaries to announce the $5.6 billion dollar plant that would generate 1,000 permanent jobs for the community. James says the two projects will be based on a number of factors, but believes there is a case for the Prince George project, though it will require political will. “When Peter Lougheed set up the petrochemical industry in Alberta, all the petrochemical producers said ‘I’m not going to build a petrochemical plant and then find out that somebody upstreamed those liquids and went somewhere else.’ [Lougheed] set up what became known as the Alberta Ethane Gathering System and they made legislation where priority was given to Alberta companies to process Alberta liquids.”
