The environmental certificate for the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline has officially expired now, after being originally issued on a 5-year term in 2014 and then given a 5-year extension.
Now, PRGT has applied to the BC government for a "substantial start" determination, which would extend the environmental certificate for the life of the project.
Which gives our newly elected minister for Environment and Parks Tamara Davidson a large decision on her plate.
The proposed pipeline would run between Hudson's Hope and the proposed Pacific Northwest LNG Natural Gas facility on Lelu Island near Prince Rupert, and is owned by the Nisga'a Nation and Western LNG.
The project is currently pre-construction, although its environmental certificate was issued 10 years ago.
The company states external factors for the delay, such as market changes, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Ksi Lisims LNG project's delay.
However, the company maintains that the project is still viable and state they've already spent over $583 million dollars on it.
The PRGT is listed as a critical part of the Ksi Lisims LNG Project, which was included in the Nisga'a Nation's plan for economic independence.
In PRGT's request they outline their commitment to Indigenous engagement and negotiating project agreements with implicated Nations.
However, Tara Marsden, Wilp Sustainability Director for the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs, says that they have not been adequately consulted, even though she says the pipeline would cross 50km of Gitanyow territory.
"We have been raising concerns over the past year and a half, two years, just over the real change that we've seen since the original authorizations that were in 2014. And so we really want to look at these projects as new projects and not as they were considered ten years ago. And one of the main concerns being raised, by our Chiefs, by our members, is climate change, and the fact that there really isn't a strong evidentiary case for LNG as a positive contributor to climate. So it's actually worse for the climate than coal is in some of the recent studies, that have, just in the past couple of years, that have come out "
Marsden says that freezing the environmental certificate and going ahead with the substantial start just doesn't make sense with climate change.
"Because already we've seen so much in the past ten years that has changed. And that's not being considered in the authorization now. And it would never be if they got this substantial start. So that's again why we've called for a new assessment, looking at the real evidence for net zero, the, the claims of net zero and LNG being a climate friendly fossil fuel. You know, renewing that and looking with all of the best available science and evidence that we have in 2024 as opposed to what was available ten years ago."
A decision on the substantial start is expected by Spring of 2025.
