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Tenth in series: Fort Nelson contractor supports Alaska Highway gasline over Mackenzie
Patricia Jones, PNA contributing writer
Bill Streeper, owner of an oilfield transportation service and fuel distribution business based in the northern British Columbia town of Fort Nelson, is quick to the point about his view of a new northern natural gas pipeline project.
“The whole thing with a pipeline is logistics … it has to go in efficiently,” said Streeper. “If I were making the decision about the easiest and most simple route, I’d pick the Alaska Highway route.”
That opinion is based on more than a quarter-century of work experience in the northern oil and gas fields, in addition to previous work as a tugboat captain in Canada’s far northern remote waters.
“I’m very familiar with the Mackenzie River pipeline route,” he said. “Infrastructure is in place along the Alaska Highway, where it does not even exist along the Mackenzie.”
For example, pipe and other construction materials can be barged to year-round ice-free ports in Vancouver, British Columbia, Skagway or Anchorage, then trucked to the pipeline construction route.
Mackenzie logistics difficult For the Mackenzie, Streeper said, construction materials must be barged during the short summer season in the Arctic waters. Furthermore, some of the river crossings along existing roads in the Northwest Territories depend on vehicle-hauling ferries which operate only in summer months.
To further complicate the road transportation issue, Streeper said, highway travel is prevented during the freeze-up and break-up seasons, when ice cannot support vehicular traffic, and the ferries cannot operate.
“You’re restricted to summer access,” he said.
In addition, the Alaska Highway route already has 90 percent of the necessary communication systems in place, 100 percent of the needed airport network already built and major communities to supply labor and support, Streeper said.
“There is a big training issue, because no one from the Mackenzie valley has worked on pipelines,” he said. “Along the highway, the communities are bigger and they have more trained, higher educated labor force.
Mackenzie lacks support infrastructure “A pipeline of that size is not going to flow by itself. It will need pump stations, repair stops and people who do that work will not want to be isolated,” he said. “Overall, the Alaska Highway route will be way easier.”
He also thinks the cost projections that show the Mackenzie route to be less expensive are somewhat misleading. “I don’t think they’re comparing apples to apples,” he said.
The actual mileage from Prudhoe Bay to the existing infrastructure in Alberta is a little more along the Alaska Highway, Streeper said. But costs may be more along the Mackenzie, due to the lack of support infrastructure.
“The Alaska Highway route has never been strongly objected to,” he added. “That’s not the case for the Mackenzie — 30 years ago, they would have shot you. None of them wanted anything to do with it.”
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