Alaska-bound rail link could ease Alberta’s oil export struggles
A new rail link has been proposed by a consortium of First Nations and business people called G7G (Generating for Seven Generations). The railway would move oil from Fort McMurray through northern British Columbia, the Yukon and Northwest Territories to Alaska’s supertanker port at Valdez, entirely bypassing the Rocky Mountains.
This proposal, recently announced by Matt Vickers, chief executive of G7G, replaces the need for an Enbridge pipeline to Kitimat, B.C. The 2,400-km G7G line, which could be completed by 2017-18, would provide social, economic, industrial and other benefits to the whole region, and provide a direct link to the rest of Canada — something a pipeline could never do.
A risky pipeline from the Alberta oilsands to Kitimat is a one-way street to China and benefits nobody other than oil interests. Oil pipelines might well be compatible in the desert of Saudi Arabia or Iraq, but not through the Rocky Mountains, lakes, rivers, canyons and other ecologically sensitive terrain in B.C.
The G7G would be the most high-tech rail system in the world. A railway with a single track would cost $8.4 billion and could carry 1.5 million barrels of oil a day. A double track would cost $10.4 billion and could carry five million barrels daily.
Compare that with the Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat, which reportedly would cost $5.5 billion to ship 525,000 barrels a day, and Kinder Morgan’s proposal to twin its pipeline to Vancouver, reported to cost $4.1 billion to add 300,000 barrels a day to its existing pipeline.
The capacity of the modern railway far exceeds that of any pipeline. Having retired as a train dispatcher after 42 years of service, I know that when double track is added, the capacity would triple. New equipment would undoubtedly be designed with modern triple axles instead of traditional twin axles, so the load per car and train would increase by 30 per cent. It would take six pipelines through the Rocky Mountains to match the capacity of the new railway.
But the real benefits would be to the region’s people. With the First Nations as partners in the railway and thousands of permanent high-paying rail and spinoff jobs from new industry, the line would build a strong economy for the whole area.
The project would end isolation and the extreme cost that families, businesses and industries pay for goods. And it would likely raise living standards.
The people in the region would finally get a modern rail transportation corridor to southern Canada and the U.S. Midwest. When the CPR and CNR were built across the Prairies to the West Coast from 1885 to 1916, they triggered the mass immigration of our grandparents’ era. The same could happen in the 21st century in Canada’s northwest.
If the federal government wants to promote oil experts to Asia, this rail option should be seriously considered.