Terrace council voted on Monday to write a letter of support to TransCanada endorsing both of its natural gas pipelines and all projects associated with those pipelines, both upstream in Northeastern B.C. where the gas originates and downstream on Lelu Island and near Kitimat where it would be cooled into a liquefied state for export.
The letter is going to be modelled after one written already by Burns Lake council.
“It’s well worth it,” said TransCanada official Dave Kmet who returned to council after a first attempt at securing an endorsement was initially rejected.
“We will get that over to our clients to include in their package to go overseas.”
“It will be a wholesale endorsement,” said Mayor Carol Leclerc after the meeting.
“You can’t have a pipeline if you’re not going to have an upstream and downstream. It wouldn’t make sense to support just a pipeline.”
She said part of the letter will deal with provisions around the industry acting responsibly in building the coastal export facilities and developing the massive drilling and fracking operations in the Northeast.
The letter was originally withheld until a meeting with the provincial minster responsible for community development Peter Fassbender at the Union of British Columbia Municipalities annual convention held in Vancouver last week.
It was the city’s hope the meeting would advance the request of northwestern local governments that provincial tax money would be directed into a revenue sharing stream based on development in the area.
Though no promises were made of such an agreement, the meeting was called “successful” by city councillor Stacey Tyers who is also the chair of the Northwest BC Resource Benefits Alliance, the group of northwestern local governments formed to push for a share of provincial tax revenue from industrial development.
