|
Alberta premier urges U.S. firms to start Arctic gasline paperwork Klein promises fast approvals and no retroactive conditions; thinks pipeline decisions “imminent;” wants gas to fuel province’s petrochemicals sector Gary Park PNA Canadian Correspondent
The Alberta government has stepped up its campaign to strip liquids from Arctic gas by promising speedy approval for any applications to build pipelines through the province.
Alberta Premier Ralph Klein pledged a streamlined regulatory process to clear the way for a pipeline in a Houston meeting with officials of ExxonMobil Corp. and Conoco Inc., said a spokesman in Klein’s office.
Klein promised the companies that if a pipeline is approved by Alberta regulators even before the producers decide whether development is commercially viable they will not face any retroactive regulations.
The spokesman said Klein’s message to the companies was that “they can always make their decisions on capital spending later. Now the first step is to say what route they’re considering, who will intervene and what will be the issues we need to deal with.”
Decisions on pipelines expected Alberta Energy Minister Murray Smith, who is accompanying Klein to Texas on a trade mission that includes 140 business leaders and Canada’s prime Minister Jean Chretien, told reporters that Klein is confident “decisions on northern pipelines (from the North Slope and Mackenzie Delta) are imminent.
“We want the gas to come through Alberta and we want the ability to process the gas in Alberta,” said Smith. “There are compelling commercial and regulatory reasons why we can do that better than anybody else in the North American continent.”
In making its case to the industry and Alaska state officials, Alberta is pointing to its established pipeline infrastructure that makes the province a take-off point for gas shipments to Canada’s major eastern markets as well as the U.S. Northeast, Midwest, Pacific Northwest and California, which already rely on Alberta for about 15 percent of their gas supplies.
In arguing that Alberta offers the most convenient route to ship Arctic gas to the Lower 48, Klein has threatened to deny a pipeline right of way unless the province has access to some of the gas liquids as feedstock for a burgeoning petrochemicals industry in the Edmonton area and at Joffre in central Alberta.
Five new Alberta plants need ethane Plans by chemical companies to build five new plants in Alberta at a combined cost of C$2.5 billion hang in the balance and could disappear without an assurance from the Alberta government of guaranteed ethane supply.
Earlier this year, Klein said Alberta is determined to “get its pound of flesh” from Arctic gas. “We’re going to be firm and absolutely insistent that neither the producers nor the pipeline operators will have a bullet line through the province.
“We will have the ability to strip the liquids off that gas for our petrochemical industry,” he said
At the time the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, Paul Celluci, a former governor of Massachusetts, told Klein his idea made sense.
The hard-line was seen as reflecting government and industry frustration with Canada’s National Energy Board which issued a permit for the Alliance pipeline to carry 1.5 billion cubic feet per day of British Columbia gas through Alberta to the U.S. Midwest without making any provision to strip ethane in Canada. The liquids carried by the two-year-old Alliance system are made available to an extraction plant in Chicago.
| 