Just ten days into July, and it's already been a busy travel month for Mayor Lee Brain who last week was in Ketchikan to help Alaskans celebrate the Fourth of July and this week is in Northern Alberta for a tour of the Pembina energy facility in Redwater Alberta.
For the trip to the Northern Alberta gas fields, the Mayor has brought Councillors Wade Niesh and Gurvinder Randhawa along with him, as the group explores how that facility works and how Pembina plans to transport its gas from Redwater to its proposed shipment terminal location on Watson Island.
In a post to his Facebook yesterday, Mr. Brain observed that the project is "in the final stages of early works" and reviewed council's notes as to how the project will bring new jobs and revenues to the community.
To this point however, there is still no full timeline available from either the City, or Pembina as to when the project will actually begin to take shape at the Watson Intermodal Trade and Logistics Park and when it will be in full operation and generating jobs and revenue.
And while the promise of revenue streams will be a welcome addition to civic coffers, the city has not outlined when the point of return on the extensive investment in Watson Island infrastructure will be reached.
For the most part, it won't be until the City has fully recovered those re-development costs, that any proposed projects at Watson Island will be able to provide the kind of revenue that will allow for some of the many civic initatives that the Mayor has indicated will benefit from any investment in the industrial park.
City Council, which didn't discuss many of their plans for Watson island in public prior to the decision not to sell the property and instead to turn the site into an industrial park, has not as of yet fully outlined the costs involved from the decommissioning of the old mill site and those required in preparation to attract investment for the reborn Watson facility.
The Watson plan did make for a significant portion of the Mayor's recent Hays 2.0 presentation, though there have been no projections as to what kind of revenue the city will be receiving from the site, when those revenue streams may begin and if any other potential tenants for the Watson park have expressed interest.
As for Pembina, the Alberta based energy company continues on with their work towards development though with a fairly low profile, with little in the way of updates on the project so far.
The project did get a mention in the company's 2017 Annual Review, which offered up a thumbnail sketch as to the path ahead. Noting for the most part that 2018 would be spent on facility design and permit applications.
Pembina has pencilled in a target of sometime in mid 2020 for service to start on the proposed 250 million dollar development. Once it is in operation it will have a permitted capacity of approximately 25,000 barrels per day of LPG for export.
The Company recently opened up its Prince Rupert office in the Capital Mall building, taking over the former office space from Pacific NorthWest LNG, they celebrated their new presence in town with an Open House at that time.
For more items of interest related to the Pembina project see our archive page here.
Note related to the Watson International Trade and Logistics Park can be reviewed here.
More background on the work of Prince Rupert City Council can be explored from our Council archive page here.
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