If you watched the news last week you may have seen where FortisBC announced a major deal to create and export LNG (liquid natural gas) from Delta to Hawaii.
This deal has been in the works for some time and represents the first export of B.C. LNG that the provincial government can proclaim.
Is it a big deal? Yes. Is it a good deal? Yes.
Natural gas will flow down from Northeast B.C. along the current pipelines and then be compressed in an expanded facility at Tilbury.
It will be loaded onto tankers at the dock being planned and shipped to Hawaii where it will replace diesel and oil feedstock for Hawaii Electric for 20 years while it prepares for carbon-free power generation.
To do this Fortis will create a new company to compress the gas for export. It needs a dock and export permit from the National Energy Board. Presto, Wespac Midstream LLC already has the permit from the NEB and is getting approval for the dock on the
Fraser River.
Unlike most LNG projects, this one will use hydro power to compress the gas. The power will come from the Ladner's Arnott substation along a yet to be constructed power line - if agreement with farmers and Delta can be gained. The environmental bonus is that no significant greenhouse gas will be produced at this site.
So what's not to be liked? The additional power will come from the grid that will need the power from Site C before long. How the power is transmitted from Arnott to Fortis may be easy or contentious - too soon to know.
The really good news is elsewhere - Hawaii is taking significant steps to convert from dirty fuels to a clean fuel enroute to solar and wind energy. That's progress.
Delta will gain an increase in taxes as the capital investment in the storage and processing facility will be in the billions. Fire risk will not likely be much different - mainly carefully controlled by design and by many checks, balances and procedures. The main caution is that we are seeing a major gas facility being built within the community whereas most facilities of this kind are required to be located away from housing and populations and located within designated major petrochemical areas. Stay tuned as the deal is not yet done. It needs approvals from several levels of government, including the State of Hawaii, which wants the conversion to carbon-free generation to proceed much more rapidly. Ian Robertson is a graduate chemical engineer and a threedecade resident of South Delta.
