Media coverage of Duke Point appeal decision

Vancouver Sun, 15 Jun 2005
Robert Barron, Nanaimo Daily News, 15 Jun 2005
Les Leyne, Times-Colonist, 16 Jun 2005

Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, June 15, 2005

BC Hydro is mulling its next step after a B.C. Court of Appeal panel ruled Tuesday that opponents of the Duke Point power project on Vancouver Island did not get a fair hearing when the project was originally considered by the B.C. Utilities Commission.

The appeal court judges voted two-to-one in favour of groups including GSX Concerned Citizens Coalition who sought to appeal the BCUC decision -- albeit on narrow grounds pertaining to the amount of information Hydro originally provided on the cost of the project.

Hydro said in a statement it will schedule a meeting of the Crown corporation's board of directors "as soon as possible" and will have no further comment until that meeting has taken place.

Project opponents have 30 days to file their appeals with the court.

"A successful appeal would overturn the Utilities Commission's decision and nullify the approval of the Duke Point Power electricity purchase agreement," the citizens coalition said in a statement.

Hydro wants Duke Point, a gas-fired electricity generating plant, to meet peak-time power needs on the Island while opponents say cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternatives exist.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

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Robert Barron
Daily News
Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Now that a three-judge panel has agreed Tuesday to allow an appeal process to move forward against the proposed Duke Point power plant, BC Hydro officials are meeting "as soon as possible" to determine the Crown corporation's next moves.

Hydro spokeswoman Elisha Moreno said a board meeting will be called to analyze the decision by the B.C. Court of Appeal's panel and "provide guidance" on the next steps that will be taken.

"(Hydro) won't have any further comment until after the meeting has taken place," Moreno said.

On June 3, the panel heard arguments from the Joint Industry Electrical Steering Committee and the Georgia Strait Crossing Concerned Citizens Coalition who were required to show the panel that the B.C. Utilities Commission committed an error in law in its February decision to allow the $250-million, 252-megawatt gas plant to move forward.

Hydro had entered into a partnership with Alberta's Pristine Power to build the plant, if given approval, to meet a perceived energy crunch on Vancouver Island by 2007.

Pristine would build and operate the plant and sell the power to Hydro in a 25-year purchase agreement that would see Hydro pick up the tab for the costs of the natural gas to feed the plant. The three-judge panel reserved its decision until Tuesday to have time to study the documents filed by all sides.

The groups had filed an appeal to the B.C. Court of Appeal on the grounds of a reasonable apprehension of bias and denial of procedural fairness on behalf of the BCUC panel that oversaw the review process, but the court ruled in April its jurisdiction covers only procedural and jurisdictional issues and denied the appeal. After a review of the court's decision, the groups decided to press their case to the court's three-judge panel.

In coming to the conclusion to allow the appeal, one judge fully granted an appeal, a second fully denied an appeal and the third granted the appeal on one issue - confidentiality - but denied an appeal on the apprehension of bias so, by majority, the appeal was granted.

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Les Leyne
Times Colonist (Victoria)
Page A12, 16-Jun-2005

The proposed Duke Point electrical generating plant is vanishing right before our very eyes.

It's more than 10 years old and still doesn't exist as anything other than a mountain of expensive course changes, court decisions, regulatory hearing transcripts and electrical supply projections. Now all of them could turn out to have been written in disappearing ink.

It's an over-budget, politically inspired mess of the first order. All that saves it from becoming a public scandal is the relative low visibility and the fact it's a complicated story about a commodity everyone takes for granted -- electricity. That, and the fact it's been running for so long now that people are inured to it.

The full extent of the project where everything that could go wrong did might not become apparent for another couple of years.

That's when, given the track record to date, it's quite conceivable Vancouver Island industries might start shutting down at peak demand times because there isn't enough electricity any more. Consumer curtailments and portable emergency diesel generators dotting the Island also wouldn't be out of the question.

Various opponents say it won't come to that -- they just have to renew the cables that now supply the Island. But that separate project is getting its own share of heat from Lower Mainland and Gulf Islands residents cool to the idea of more overhead wires.

The latest news on this star-crossed 10-year-old plan to get more electricity on the Island comes from the B.C. Court of Appeal. The justices this week allowed some interest groups the right to appeal a utilities commission decision earlier this year that the deal between B.C. Hydro and the private proponents behind Duke Point makes enough economic sense that the project can proceed.

Those groups include a citizens group that has fought the project for years, two environmental groups and the major electricity customers on the Island. (That group is spearheaded by NorskeCanada, whose mills could make considerable profit by curtailing production and selling the unused power to Hydro themselves.)

The prospect of yet another hearing isn't particularly exciting news. But this week's decision could be the end of the line for a multimillion-dollar B.C. Hydro production that over the years has wandered the length of the Island, gone through several private partners, morphed into assorted shapes, spent years in various approval process and still gone nowhere.

Hydro informed the B.C. Utilities Commission last March that if the leave to appeal was granted before June 30, it has the right to abandon the project and proceed with contingency plans. Alternatively, the crucial agreement between Hydro and the private partners will stay in place only until July 31, if the appeal is still alive.

That means there are two potential go or no-go decision dates looming. B.C. Hydro can now scrub the project on a few days' notice, or wait until the drop-dead date on July 31. Early reaction to the court decision indicated B.C. Hydro is going to make a quick call on the project in the near future. The board of directors is expected to meet soon to decide.

The B.C. Liberal government is staying as far away from the mess as it can, with Energy Minister Richard Neufeld saying it is entirely up to the utility company. Hydro will wait until today to see what the new cabinet looks like and who the energy minister is, then the board will huddle and decide what to do next.

Directors could decide to wait some more, while a full-scale appeal of the commission's decision is prepared, heard and decided upon. And if the opponents win, that could also involve backing up and holding more commission hearings.

There have been so many delays already that another year or more looks minor by comparison. Or they could decide to pull the plug and cut their losses, which are now in the tens of millions of dollars. That would burn their private partners (Calgary-based Pristine Power is the operating company). But two private partners in past incarnations of the project have already been burned, so it's not like that's stopped them in the past.

It became clear years ago to all the B.C. Hydro experts that the Island would be facing a shortage of capacity. The NDP cabinet directed Hydro to pursue the generating plant as the preferred option. It's remarkable since then how circumstances -- natural gas prices, determined citizens' groups, unfavourable rulings and political changes -- have conspired to the point where the utility now has to make a major decision in which either option is loaded with negative and expensive consequences.

leyne@island.net

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