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Canada climbs aboard British Columbia-Alaska rail link study; funding, project scope to come later
The Canadian government is ready to participate in a feasibility study of the British Columbia-Alaska rail link, Transport Minister Jean Lapierre said March 21.
The announcement came 10 months after Tony Valeri, Lapierre’s predecessor, recommended that his department lead a design-development exercise, and less than a month after Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski spent a day in Ottawa lobbying cabinet ministers on various issues.
The British Columbia and Yukon governments support the concept of completing the final 1,100-mile stake of what has been billed as the last transcontinental railroad.
However, BC Rail, formerly owned by the British Columbia government and now operating under Canadian National Railway, said last year that it had never found evidence of sufficient freight volumes to support building the link — a project currently projected to cost C$4 billion. Financing not part of deal The provincial government has also made it clear that its backing of the concept does not extend to financing either a feasibility study or construction.
B.C. Energy and Mines Minister Richard Neufeld told Petroleum News earlier in March that his government is “not putting any money into a rail link and I would be surprised if the Yukon is either because the Yukon doesn’t have a lot of money.”
While some people make the case that a railroad is needed to support construction of an Alaska gas pipeline, North Slope gas owner ConocoPhillips questions the validity of that argument, he said.
Neufeld said British Columbia would support the project because it would help keep the province’s ports busy, but it would require Canadian National Railway, Canadian Pacific Rail or some other company to decide the project made economic sense.
Proponents have contended for years that a railroad would stimulate resource development in northern British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska, although the cost has been the final obstacle.
That has changed with the odds of an Alaska pipeline improving and the U.S. Department of Defense planning to locate much of the infrastructure for its Strategic Defense Initiative in Alaska.
Lapierre’s department said funding and details of the feasibility study will soon be worked out “with all the partners.”
—Gary Park
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