A Calgary company is looking at Crown land near Summit Lake as a possible location for a plant to make a widely used ingredient in commercial fertilizers.
Channel West Partners Inc. (CWP) has applied to the provincial government for permission to carry out a geotechnical analysis on a 457-hectare site about 30 kilometres north of Prince George city limits to see if it can support the tanks and buildings for a facility to make urea.
Natural gas is a primary raw material in making the product and the company's vice-president of marketing, Ilene Schmaltz, said that fits well with CWP's mandate to develop projects that utilize excess natural gas in Western Canada.
Schmaltz said the location is one of several in B.C. and Alberta CWP is considering for such a facility and the search is in a very preliminary stage. The province's Integrated Land Management Bureau accepted CWP's application on March 16 and Schmaltz hopes to see a permit issued to the company within 60 to 90 days.
The site is just south of the starting point for the proposed Pacific Trails natural gas pipeline, which would connect the Spectra Energy Transmission pipeline system to the Kitimat LNG (liquified natural gas) terminal 463 kilometres to the west.
CWP was one of the associates that initiated the Kitimat LNG project before selling it to Apache Canada Ltd., Encana Corp. and EOG Resource Inc. in December 2010. CWP president Rosemary Boulton was president of Kitimat LNG before the sale, "so we are familiar with developing large-scale projects from the ground floor up," Schmaltz said.
Whether to build the Pacific Trail pipeline, pegged at more than $1 billion, remains pending, but Schmaltz said CWP's proposal is not contingent on that decision because it would also be in close proximity to the Spectra pipeline.
The site is just south of Giscome Portage between Highway 97 North and the CN Rail line.
"Once you produce urea, you can rail it, that's usually how you move urea," Schmaltz said.
The location falls within about 3,000 hectares in the so-called Hart North area. The Fraser-Fort George Regional District (FFGRD) has identified for industrial use although FFGRD development services manager Terry McEachen said it remains subject to rezoning, a process that requires a public hearing.
Summit Lake resident and perennial Green Party candidate Hilary Crowley, who has been an outspoken opponent of heavy industry in the area said she will keep an eye on the proposal. Crowley did say it appears to be an improvement over a steel mill once proposed for the area but remains concerned.
"I don't know the process [for making urea] so I don't know what the emissions would be from that and how harmful it could be to the river, because it's really, really close to the Salmon River," Crowley said.
She is also worried the plant would use natural gas obtained through fracking, a controversial extraction method.
Schmaltz said it will be a large-scale facility as far as urea is concerned if it goes ahead. If CWP decides to take the proposal further, formal permitting will begin later this year.
"We going to keep the footprint as small as possible and we're going to be doing everything from an environmental point of view to keep the area within the government standards for air quality, land quality etcetera," Schmaltz said.
"It is always a challenge with people in different areas that don't really want industrial development but we would hope that if this is the site that we choose that we go out and talk to people in the area first to see how they feel about our potential project before we get too far down the road."
