The province has missed its chance to save millions of dollars, says a Union Gas manager.
Union Gas is investing $26 million to upgrade a section of natural gas pipe near Dawson Road. The upgrade includes replacing 18 kilometres of 10-inch pipe with 12-inch pipe from the main transition line to the central part of the city.
The upgrade is expected to help meet some of the city’s heating needs for businesses and residents.
The replacement is part of regular maintenance.
Although the upgrade is going to help with the communities heating needs, David Sword, district manager of Union Gas for Northwestern Ontario, said it won’t be able to accommodate the coal-fired Thunder Bay Generating Station if it were ever to be converted to gas.
“We would have needed a 14- to a 16-inch pipe and we’re not putting that in,” he said. “We’re putting it in to meet our needs and what our project needs are for the local economy. We think that this was a lost opportunity that could have been easily fulfilled doing it all at the same time.”
Sword suspected that it would have saved the province about $20 million if they had made their decision about the plant sooner.
Ontario stopped the conversion in November claiming it would save hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.
He said Union Gas tried to delay the process until a decision was made about the plant but they couldn’t wait any longer to upgrade the nearly decade-old pipes.
Sword said if the province decides to convert the plant they would need to put in another pipeline to accommodate it.
Iain Angus, co-chair of the Thunder Bay Energy Task Force, said that the decision for Union Gas to move forward with the upgrade won’t have any impact to the decision to convert the plant.
He said they knew since the plant was suspended that Union Gas needed to know how big the pipe needed to be. Since the company didn’t have a contract in place with the Ontario Power Authority they went ahead with their original plan.
“When we get the decision by the Ontario government to move forward with the conversion and I’m still optimistic that will happen, then OPG will enter into new discussions with Union Gas with the construction of a brand new line,” he said. “It will be at OPG’s cost. We knew all along that this was going to happen.”
He added that this wasn’t a deal breaker for whether or not the province will convert the coal-fired station.
