Group opposes chemical plant

A group of Pineview residents living in farmland on the eastern edge of Prince George are voicing their objections to a plan by West Coast Olefins Ltd., to build a natural gas liquids (NGL) extraction plant on a 320-acre parcel of land in the area.

The Calgary-based company needs the extraction plant to process natural gas from the Enbridge Westcoast Energy pipeline, which runs through the property, and extract propane, butane, and natural gas condensates.

A 10-inch steel high pressure vapour pipeline would be built to transport the extracted hydrocarbons 7.5 kilometres from the natural gas recovery system in Pineview to a storage/processing facility on the company’s 120-hectare (300-acre) property at 10012 Willow Cale Rd., in an area zoned for heavy industrial use.

The agricultural land the company intends to purchase is owned by Fred Pain of Knutsford, B.C.

For the plant to be built there, 25 acres of the property would have to be removed from the Agricultural Land Reserve and be rezoned for industrial use.

From her property on Lund Road where she grew up on land she and her parents farmed, Carol Wood can see the proposed site of the plant right next door to the west, just beyond the BC Hydro transmission towers, and the thought of what could be soon standing there chills her soul.

“An industrial project does not belong on farmland,” said Carol Wood. “My biggest fear if they turn that chunk of land into industrial is what’s the next. Once one thing happens, the next falls.”

On June 26, a few days after contacting them individually, West Coast Olefins Ltd. president Ken James, chief operating officer Ron Just and regulatory director Christine Olson met with about a dozen Pineview residents to discuss the proposal. Wood said the company politely declined a request to host a community meeting while it awaits regulatory approval of the project from the Oil and Gas Commission.

Gary Wood (no relation to Carol) just finished an addition to his house on Lund Road to create room for his son and grandchildren to move to the land and their efforts over the past 10 years will allow the family to keep farming long after he’s gone. He’s worried about the impact a gas plant will have on their quality of life.

“I worked all my life to buy this place and pay for it so I could retire out here and then I get a phone call to say they want to put a gas plant across the road from me,” he said. “It was devastating. The biggest thing is the health of my family.

“We are not opposed to economic growth or projects of this nature, however it is an industrial plant and should not be on agricultural land which is protected by our government.”

In July 2019, West Coast Olefins announced plans to build a $5.6 billion plastic pellet complex. Recovered ethane extracted from the natural gas recovery system would then be sent to an ethylene processor to make up to one million tonnes per year of polymer-grade ethylene.

The majority of that would be used in the adjacent ethylene derivatives plant to make polyethylene, in plastic pellet form, and possibly mono-ethylene glycol to be used as antifreeze and heat transfer fluid. Most of the finished plastic product would be shipped to Asia using the CN Rail line to Prince Rupert.

Reached at her home in Calgary on Sunday, Olson said the natural gas extraction plant being proposed for Pineview would contain only the minimal amount of equipment needed to extract propane, butane and natural gas condensates from the natural gas pipeline and ethane would put back in the pipeline. The rest of the separation process will occur at the BCR site.

“The plastics plant is a completely different project,” said Olson. “We’re not taking ethane out. The rest of the equipment, in order to separate, store and sell the product, is over in the BCR industrial area. But the extraction portion has to be next to the pipeline. We would sell propane and butane, and natural gas condensates are a feedstock for refineries.”

WCOL still intends to build the plastics plant in Prince George but it is being considered a separate project which will require its own regulatory approvals.

“It’s on a different timeline and it’s on a different schedule and the polyethylene portion of it would be built on a different site,” said Olson. “If that goes forward, there would have to be a small expansion to the extraction plant to add ethane removal, which isn’t there now. There would be no more land required. It would just be a process change and we would put ethane into the pipeline (to the BCR site) at that time. But that again would require consultation with the same residents and we would have to get their approval, and we’d only be doing it if the ethylene plant looked like it was going to go.”

According to the consultation letter given to the residents, if approved, construction of the NGL plant would begin in the third quarter of 2022, with upgrading and construction of the access road to extend McRinney Road first, followed by site preparation. Installation of facility equipment is slated begin late in the fall of 2022 or spring of 2023 and the proposed on-stream start up would by the fall or winter of 2024.

Residents were told by James, a resident of Prince George from 1974-84, that construction of the extractor project would create more than 100 jobs.

The residents have started a petition against the project at the Pineview store. As of Saturday afternoon, 65 people had signed the petition, while six were in favour of it.