Northern Sentinel
It is questionable how quickly energy-industry developments in the Kitimat-Terrace area will start to provide major change in the District of Kitimat – but the last few weeks of related announcements and press releases has certainly been encouraging to me.
Since the LNG Canada announcement, there has been a sufficient and satisfying number of intriguing and newsworthy media stories to speed up the realization that this is going to become a pretty busy place as the pace picks up through the winter planning phases and spring and summer construction periods.
My own Google “alert” system, in the past few days alone, has indicated enough of a gradual increase in meaningful and potentially encouraging news stories to lift my hopes that we will actually see some real activity over and above traffic increases in town in the next several months.
Despite the hiccup of possible court-initiated natural gas pipeline delays, there’s been enough high value news – Rio Tinto’s lease and sale of the former West Fraser wharf and development land to LNG Canada for $576-million and the accompanying news that LNG Canada has also agreed to build a replacement wharf for Rio’s export shipments of aluminum from the B.C. Works smelter represents a major step forward.
It also provides a few answers to some of the logistical questions about the future appearance of our now-familiar industrial waterfront picture. Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V. (Boskalis) – in a contract valued at US$114-million – began dredging the Kitimat waterfront for the development of the LNG export facility earlier this fall.
For the rest of this column: https://www.northernsentinel.com/opinion/sleepy-kitimat-stirs-ahead-of-the-lng-canada-project/