|
Stop playing politics Eighth in series: Oilfield worker sees Watson Lake as possible transportation hub for gasline project, related exploration Patricia Jones PNA Contributing Writer
Pat Stevenson starts nearly every year hundreds of miles from his home in Watson Lake, working in the oil fields of northern Alberta.
Owner of Watson Lake Motors Ltd. and Rudy’s 24 Hour Towing, Stevenson takes a crew of four men south, starting the end of December. Using his big semi-tractor trailer trucks, Stevenson’s men move oil rigs through early April.
He’d rather use that oil field experience locally, providing service to exploration crews in the Yukon and northern British Columbia. While just a dream now, Stevenson thinks it could happen in the future, if a natural gas pipeline were built along the Alaska Highway.
“If it comes down the highway, they’ll open up northern British Columbia for exploration,” he said. “There’s no access to the markets right now.”
Not only could such development spark oil and gas exploration locally, governmental regulators could require that logs be harvested from those newly developed areas. “There’s no logging in the Yukon right now — it’s all been shut down,” he said. “Exploration leases could force them to use logs.”
Natural gas is cleaner burning than diesel, he added. “The tree huggers should even love it.”
Stevenson objects to a pipeline being buried under the Arctic Ocean, then traversing south through the Mackenzie River Valley. “Twelve years down the road — how do they detect and fix leaks?” Few people in Mackenzie area In addition to environmental reasons for building along the Alaska Highway, he cites economic reasons. Few people live and work in the Mackenzie River Valley. More people in Canada and in Alaska will benefit from the highway route, he said.
“It won’t be a boom, but it will be steady growth,” he said.
Watson Lake would likely become a transportation hub, as the community near the Yukon-British Columbia border also serves as a crossroads of sorts. The Campbell Highway leading north to the Ross River intersects with the Alaska Highway at Watson Lake, and just northwest of town a few miles, the Cassiar Highway cuts south towards Dease Lake.
Trucks hauling freight north on the Alaska Highway must purchase Yukon tags, if driving any further north than Watson Lake. Freight companies could stage in the community, switching loads and avoiding the extra licensing costs, Stevenson said.
He anticipates a decision on the natural gas pipeline project soon after national elections in Canada.
“I’ve never seen a big natural gas project announced before an election,” he said. “Usually it’s afterwards — if it goes badly, there’s lots of time to forget about it until the next election.”
The delay and indecision is part of the political game, he added.
“There’s a whole bunch of lawyers that ain’t going to have a job when they say okay,” he said. “They’re benefiting, but we aren’t.”
| 