Gas hub scrambles to meet the boom

By Scott Simpson
Vancouver Sun
26-Jan-2006

Fort St. John's scramble to keep pace with its role as the hub of British Columbia's energy sector reached a new level of urgency on Wednesday with an industry prediction that natural gas exploration in the province will jump about 20 per cent this year.

The Petroleum Services Association of Canada forecast a fourth-consecutive record year for oil and natural gas drilling across the country, and predicting 1,600 new gas wells for B.C.

The association made a preliminary forecast last October and stuck to it this week on the premise that exploration is turning into a year-round enterprise despite warm winter weather that would have made travel across muddy, unfrozen ground an insurmountable challenge in years past.

"There is so much activity taking place spread over such a vast region, that if a company can't access a certain target area because of warmer temperatures, they can just focus their operations on another location, with very little impact on their drilling schedule," PSAC president Roger Soucy said in a news release.

Unacknowledged by Soucy was the additional demand for accommodation and services that this increased activity is generating in gas industry-focused communities.

Fort St. John Mayor Jim Eglinski greeted the announcement with equanimity, acknowledging that his community is already struggling to find homes for all the energy industry workers who've been arriving each year seeking homes for their young families.

"We have not seen the community slack off," Eglinski confirmed in an interview. "Our community has basically been booked solid in terms of hotels and accommodations for the last two years."

However, he added, city council is determined to prevent the same sort of unchecked, unsustainable growth and inflation rates that have overwhelmed Alberta oilsands focal point Fort McMurray.

"Their growth is basically out of control. The housing prices there are astronomically high even though it is a booming community, prices are unrealistic even for an old trailer on a lot -- that's probably in the $300,000 range."

Eglinski, a former city councillor and RCMP member who unseated incumbent Steve Thorlakson in the Fort St. John civic election two months ago, has been in Vancouver this week to monitor activity in another booming resource sector -- mining.

He's attending the Association of Mineral Explorers BC annual mining conference, talking with miners and explorers to get a sense of any new direction for economic activity in the Northeast.

"We are the main community for the oil and gas area of the North Peace, and if there was mining we would look at it the same way," he said.

In the near-term, council's biggest task is to cope with growth driven by the gas industry. The province's Multiple Listing Service reported that so-called "Northern Lights" communities saw housing starts jump almost 32 per cent last year, including 185 new homes in Fort St. John. Eglinski said that number could have been another 20 per cent higher -- but was held back by a shortage of skilled trades in Fort St. John. Currently there's a one-year wait for a new house.

ssimpson@png.canwest.com