Enbridge Inc. says there will be opportunities for northern B.C. businesses and workers during the construction of its proposed $5.5-billion Northern Gateway Pipeline.
While the Calgary-based company does have estimates of the overall economic impact and job creation for the project, it does not, however, have any estimates for the regional impact in northern B.C.
It provided no regional construction job impact numbers recently in its filing of its eight-volume, 8,000-page-plus regulatory application to the National Energy Board.
Enbridge representative Colin Kinsley also said Friday he had no immediate numbers at his fingertips on the regional job impacts. Kinsley, a former Prince George mayor, made a presentation of the benefits of the 1,170-kilometre twin pipeline to the 2010 Resources Expo, in which he noted there would be $36 million in annual municipal tax benefits to northern B.C. communities and that during the the estimated three-year construction period thousands of temporary jobs would be created.
Kinsley said there would be opportunities not only in construction, but in servicing and supplying the project. "We want to see that communities see benefits other than taxation," he told a small audience at the Expo. "It's part of us earning our social licence," he added.
In the same presentation at the Resources Expo, Enbridge engineering manager Ray Doer said safety is a key element in the design of the project.
Asked about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Doer noted that deep-sea drilling and shipping oil by tankers on the ocean are very different. However, he said Enbridge is having discussions with people at the Gulf of Mexico to see if there are lessons that can be learned in ensuring their emergency response plans are adequate.
Doer also stressed the record on tanker traffic has improved significantly since the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill. A key safety initiative will be the use of powerful tugs to escort oil tankers in coastal waters, he said.
See Saturday's Citizen for more
