By Liam Verster

Pipeline Expansion

Province welcomes approval of GP area pipeline expansion, criticizes delay

Oct 20, 2020 | 1:26 PM

CALGARY – The Alberta government is welcoming news that Ottawa has approved an expansion of the Nova Gas Transmission Ltd. gathering system, while condemning federal delays that it says cost this summer’s construction season.

Federal Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan says the $2.3-billion expansion, which will help move sweet gas from the Grande Prairie area to southern Alberta, was approved by the government as part of a “commitment to moving forward with good projects.”

In a release, he says the federal government strengthened five conditions proposed by the Canada Energy Regulator and added one new condition, with the changes aimed at better addressing Indigenous rights and mitigating construction impacts on caribou habitat.

He says the pipeline division owned by Calgary-based TC Energy Corp. will now be required to restore 3,840 hectares of caribou habitat, an area 30 times the size of the habitat impacted by the project, and an Indigenous working group is to be formed to assist with the restoration and monitoring plan.

The project is expected to create up to 2,920 direct jobs during construction, the federal release said, while adding 344 kilometres of new pipeline to the existing Nova system from west of Red Deer in central Alberta to near Grande Prairie.

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Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage says the expansion is a “key infrastructure project” for the province’s natural gas industry.

“The NGTL expansion will provide increased capacity that is critically important to market access for the Canadian natural gas industry, which has suffered from bottlenecks and capacity constraints to key markets in Eastern Canada and the United States,” says Savage in a press release.

“This pipeline system expansion, vital to ensuring Alberta natural gas continues to trade competitively, is a multibillion-dollar private investment that will create 5,500 construction jobs and $817 million in labour income for Albertans. Overall, the project will also create an estimated $110 million in economic opportunities for Indigenous-led companies.”

The project was approved in February, and expected to be under construction over the summer. However, the project was delayed, and the bulk of the construction is not expected to be underway until 2021.

“We congratulate TC Energy on their perseverance in seeing the project through to this final approval and for continuing to be a valuable contributor towards Alberta’s economic recovery.”

(With files from the Canadian Press)