BC to build $400 million transmission line

Vancouver – There is no equivocation from B.C.’s minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Blair Lekstrom on the matter of completing the province’s proposed northwest transmission line (NTL).

“We’re building this,” he says in an interview with The Northern Miner.

The $404 million project will see high-voltage transmission lines blazed 355 km north of Mezziadin to Bob Quinn, bringing a swath of the province’s most advanced mega-mining projects within striking distance of cheap electricity.

The list of more than a dozen advanced-stage projects includes Seabridge Gold‘s (SEA-T, SA-X) KSM deposit, NovaGold (NG-T, NG-X) and Teck‘s (TCK. B-T, TCK-N) Galore Creek project and Copper Fox Metals‘ (CUU-V, CPFXF-O) Schaft Creek project. A study by a working group looking at the benefits of the NTL estimated that it might unleash $15 billion worth of projects in the region.

Lekstrom’s commitment to build the line follows an announcement by the federal government that it would make $130 million available for the project. Billed as green-power infrastructure, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the federal money while meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington.

A backgrounder to Harper’s announcement said that “up to a maximum of $130 million for this project” would be provided to the provincial government and that the federal government’s support was “conditional on the signing of a contribution agreement with the British Columbia government under the Green Infrastructure Fund.”

Lekstrom says that he fully expects the $130 million to come as the provincial government has made it clear that it is willing to cover the rest of the transmission line’s capital requirements. “We will bring the remainder,” he says.

Part of the remaining $274 million may come from the private sector. Lekstrom says the provincial government is currently sitting at the table with private stakeholders, primarily in the mining and energy sectors, to negotiate a contribution.

No firm commitments have been announced and the potential size of the contribution is up in the air. “I don’t want to speculate,” Lekstrom says. He notes, however, that many of the stakeholders cannot advance their projects without the NTL.

But would the provincial government still go ahead with the transmission line even if private industry doesn’t ante up? “We made a commitment to build this line,” he says.

In terms of a timeline, the federal government’s backgrounder envisions ground being broken in early 2010, pending approval of a provincial environmental assessment. Given that Lekstrom says the project would take about three years to build electricity could flow in the first half of 2013.