Enbridge discusses future plans for the north coast

Enbridge Northern Gateway's vice president of communication and aboriginal partnerships, Roger Harris, was in Prince Rupert last Wednesday to talk oil and pipelines with the local chamber of commerce.

While the speech was centered on whether or not the proposed pipeline project would make the north Coast safer to operate all shipping tankers - and whether or not the amount of jobs it would bring to the region was significant - the question over priorities was brought up as well.

According to the Dogwood Initiative (an environmental organization out of Victoria) the pipeline proponents seem to be saying one thing to stakeholders on the North Coast and something else to their shareholders around the world.

Not s0, said Harris. He said there were different timelines available because their projections for stakeholders were not the same the ones shareholders based on commercial support.

According to Harris, the current plan would see bitumen oil flowing through the 1,170-kilometre pipeline by 2016, with construction under that timeline to begin in 2014.

Enbridge Inc. has $15 billion in new projects under consideration as the company looks at expanding its network of pipelines to carry Alberta crude to the most lucrative export markets in Asia and the U.S.

The ability to get Alberta crude to markets in Asia and California will also play a role in Enbridge's strategy in the years ahead, Patrick Daniel, Enbridge's CEO, has said in the past to the Canadian Press.

"The oil could then be shipped by tanker to California and East Asia," Daniel said.

"This project is also very critical to maximizing the pricing of Canadian crude oil in the period post 2014, when once again we think that we would have flooded the traditional market for Canadian crude."

"There is no commercial support for the project at the moment," said Harris. The company hopes to develop interest as they work their way through the environmental regulatory process.

Dogwood's Eric Swanson said when Daniel lists his priorities post 2012, all of the projects he talks about do not have 'commercial support' in the form of supply contracts.

"And Gateway is still last of the four," said Swanson.

"Yes there are lots of projects that didn't make the timeline because they don't have commercial support, but only Gateway is going through a regulatory process, only Gateway has a huge machine already behind it funded by $100 million, and yet it is still last on Enbridge's list of priorities."

When asked by a Credit Suisse analyst, Andrew Kuske, to look post-2012 with the current volumetric production, and projected production [of oil out of Alberta], Daniel said that there are "probably two or three areas of opportunity."

Harris wanted to clarify the job prospects in the north for Northern Gateway, something the company has been at pains to add to.

The original number the company thought was to be 40 for operations of the dual pipelines but Harris told luncheon attendees that the number should be closer to 200 when all the offshore logisitical help is realized to help tankers move in and out of the Douglas Channel.

With files from the Canadian Press