Prince George Citizen October 12, 2018 by Prince George Citizen

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Friday, October 12, 2018 | Your community newspaper since 1916

Enbridge restores smaller gas pipeline Citizen staff/Citizen news service The company that shut down its main natural gas pipeline through British Columbia following an explosion and fire Tuesday night in Prince George says it has restarted a smaller line running beside the damaged pipe. Enbridge says it received National Energy Board approval Wednesday night to restart its 76-centimetre line, which was shut down as a precaution because it is in the same path as the 91-centimetre line that ruptured and exploded near Prince George. The Calgary-based energy supplier says the line was carefully checked before permission was received to restart it at about 80 per cent of normal capacity. However, two of Canfor’s operations – Northwood and Prince George Pulp – remained out of commission as of Thursday morning. “Employees are continuing to work at those mills doing maintenance and other activities,” Canfor spokeswoman Michelle Ward said. The Intercontinental pulp mill continued to operate, running on alternate fuels. Prince George Sawmill was also unaffected, contrary to an initial report. Fortis BC, the company that depends on the Enbridge line for about 85 per cent of the gas it delivers to its one million customers, says in an online notice that gas is now flowing, but customers are still asked to cut back. It says restoring flow in the smaller line is a positive step, but until the damaged larger line is repaired, a shortage of natural gas continues. In response to the call for conservation, the B.C. Institute of Technology has tweeted that heat is off on the north side of its Burnaby campus until further notice, while the University of B.C. has told researchers and other non-essential users to immediately stop using natural gas. The UBC bulletin says although gas use should still be restricted, “UBC buildings that use natural gas for heating, hot water and cooking are no longer expected to be impacted.” In an earlier news release, Enbridge said it is working with other companies to find alternate supplies of gas to meet demand.

CITIZEN PHOTO BY BRENT BRAATEN

A pipeline crosses the Fraser River at Shelley. The blast damaged the company’s primary natural gas pipeline linking the Fort Nelson area to Vancouver and south to another 750,000 customers in the northwest

United States. Investigators are still searching for a cause of the blast just outside Prince George but no evidence of criminal activity was found,

RCMP said, and added that the investigation has been turned over to the Transportation Safety Board, with assistance from the National Energy Board and Enbridge.

Pipeline explosion strands natural gas Real estate investors face output, cuts into wellhead prices bidding wars in Kitimat Citizen news service Tuesday’s pipeline explosion near Prince George is interrupting natural gas deliveries and cutting into the cold weather price bonus Canadian gas producers had been enjoying for the past few weeks. More than 1.6 billion cubic feet per day – roughly 10 per cent of Western Canada’s daily natural gas output – was stranded when Enbridge Inc. halted transport on the 91-centimetre line that exploded and on its neighbouring 76-centimetre line. The National Energy Board allowed Enbridge to restart the smaller line at a lower pressure, but analysts say that still leaves between 600 million and 800 million cubic feet per day of gas without

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an easy path to market. “There are not a lot of other routes for gas to reach Vancouver or for export,” said Ian Archer, associate director for IHS Markit, pointing out about one billion cf/d of the normal daily payload is headed for export into Washington. “It was the main line that went out. So I would assume this is Enbridge’s absolute No. 1 priority to get fixed.” Prices at the main interior B.C. trading hub have crashed to about $1 per thousand cubic feet from around $2.60 before the incident, said commodity analyst Martin King of GMP FirstEnergy. “For those that can get gas out, prices at Station 2 have come down quite a bit because the

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line break is south of the trading point,” said King, adding producers who can’t get their gas out will have to shut down their wells. Some B.C. gas is being redirected into Alberta markets, Archer said, causing prices there to slip from around $2.50 per gigajoule (an energy unit that’s similar in size to 1,000 cubic feet) to just over $2. The analysts say they expect Enbridge will restore the pipeline to service within a week or two, given the lack of damage to the parallel line and the high priority of restoring gas to residential markets in B.C. at the beginning of winter. Alberta and B.C. gas prices had jumped in recent weeks thanks to more demand because of unusually cold weather in Alberta.

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Frank O’BRIEN Citizen news service Residential real estate investors hoping to make a quick buck in Kitimat are running into veteran property owners who are jacking up prices as the largest private investment in Canadian history avalanches onto the town. “It has been crazy in the last few days. I have been working 16-hour days,” said Shannon Dos Santos of Re/Max Kitimat Realty, one of only seven real estate agents in the northwest B.C. town of 8,000 that will anchor the $40 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipeline and export terminal greenlighted Oct. 1

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by the LNG Canada consortium headed by Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A). “We had 87 home listings 40 hours ago. Now we have less than 10,” Dos Santos said. After three years of dormant sales and prices, vendors are greedy to cash in. “Sellers are not being reasonable,” Dos Santos said. On Oct. 2, a Dos Santos client made an offer on a $125,000 building lot that had been on the market for months. The seller is now demanding $300,000 for the 8,000-square-foot parcel. Another buyer bid $25,000 over asking for a house on Oct. 1, but lost out to a higher bid. — see ‘EVERYTHING, page 2

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