Fort Nelson plant closure highlights govt lack of interest in the North
When NorthRiver Midstream announced the coming closure of its Fort Nelson Gas Plant last week, both provincial opposition parties and Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies MP Bob Zimmer characterized NRM’s decision as being largely due to government policies that are not resource-friendly.
A total of 48 employees will be laid off in Fort Nelson, but the impacts are more than just to those families, because they in turn, support the businesses of Fort Nelson and the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality.
Peace River North MLA Dan Davies said he’s “shocked and saddened” by this announcement which he called a “significant impact on the community.”
In addition to the gas plant, there’s a small LNG facility attached to the plant that sends liquefied natural gas up to the Yukon, and Fort Nelson gets its electricity from a co-generation plant that is supplied by the NRM gas plant.
The electricity comes from BC Hydro, but Fort Nelson in not part of the BC Hydro grid.
“They’re their own little world up there, in their electricity with natural gas, at the co-gen plant that’s attached to the gas plant,” said Davies. “They are connected to the Alberta grid; they sell their excess electricity to Alberta.”
“Does that mean that Fort Nelson is going to have to be buying electricity from Alberta, which we know is much more expensive than our electricity currently,” he said.
NRM in its statement announcing the closure that they have been working for over a year to find long-term viable solutions to ensure a stable supply of producer gas volumes to continue plant operations. As a midstream company, NorthRiver relies on natural gas from producers for its operations. They cite last year’s wildfire activity in northeastern BC as the reason for the lack of gas.
“Currently, NorthRiver has no future certainty on sustained area production as producers have provided notice that they do not intend to resume production that was shut in due to wildfire,” read the statement.
However, Davies and other area politicians believe there’s more to the issue than just the wildfires.
“The NDP has created a climate that’s pretty much anti-oil & gas, and this is just part of the trickle-down effect of that. They need to be supporting and coming up with a solution to support these industries to keep this community thriving,” Davies said.
There’re big challenges in the Fort Nelson area, and Davies said that not only is the NDP government not oil and gas friendly, but they don’t seem to be very favourable towards the resource sector as a whole. There are plenty of opportunities for forestry, oil and gas, and mining, he said but because of the investment climate the current provincial government has created, companies aren’t looking to invest in the North.
“We need to tell the world, tell the rest of Canada that we are open for business,” he said. “Places like Fort Nelson, there’s no reason Fort Nelson should be struggling right now, as far as economy goes.”
The abundance of natural gas in the area is one reason Fort Nelson shouldn’t be struggling. The gas is different from the Montney play, but there’s still opportunities for that gas.
“The forest industry up there, again there’s no reason why we can’t see something being done locally in Fort Nelson as far as forestry, but we’ve yet to see that.”
“There’s lots of opportunities up in the Northeast for mining, but companies aren’t looking at it because of the climate that the NDP has created,” he said. “We’re in a world where there’s a shortage of critical minerals. There are a lot of the critical minerals that are located throughout the province, as well as our valuable minerals, like gold. A lot of those are located in the far northeast.”
Fort Nelson could be a hub for a lot of that activity, Davies said.
MP Bob Zimmer echoed much of what Davies said and believes the impacts of the NorthRiver gas plant closure are going to be vast.
“This gas plant has been there for many years and provides a lot of work to locals,” Zimmer said. “The benefits to the coffeeshops, to the restaurants, to the grocery stores is going to really be felt up there.”
In 2015, Zimmer said there were 18 LNG projects that were proposed in BC, but with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in power, none of those projects are shipping natural gas to the world. Foreign leaders have asked for Canada’s gas, but the Prime Minister has repeatedly said there’s “no business case” for it.
“That plant didn’t need to close, it could’ve been fully operational, actually ramping up production, getting that natural gas to our local communities in BC, across Canada and to the world,” Zimmer said.
BC Conservative leader John Rustad also expressed his sorrow over the gas plant closure announcement.
"When northern BC prospers, our whole province prospers,” Rustad said. “Our northern communities are critical to the economic vitality of our province and have always demonstrated remarkable resilience. But resilience isn’t enough when David Eby and the NDP government continues to pass anti-development, anti-industry policies that make it harder and harder to do business in our province.”
Operations at the Fort Nelson gas plant will wind down over the next six months, meanwhile NorthRiver says it “remains committed to continuing to work with area producers, the Province of BC and other stakeholders on solutions that would allow for gas processing to resume in due course.”