Power corridor plans for Northwest to be left on the drawing board?

With the Galore Creek mining project in a suspended state, so to may be plans to electrify the Highway 37 North corridor.

The 400 million dollar plan approved last month to hook up that corridor into the BC Electrical grid is considered on hold now.

And without a major private sector investor to step up and invest into it, there’s a good chance it will stay on the shelf for the foreseeable future.

Besides becoming the main user of the electricity to be generated by the project, Galore Creek were scheduled to inject 158 million dollars into that 400 million dollar price tag.

Without their participation, the government has its doubts that the feasibility of the project.

The Vancouver Sun has posted to their website some background on what led to the second look at the project.

Collapse of Galore mine project leaves transmission line in limbo
Without private sector investment, B.C. won't fund electricity link
Scott Simpson
Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, November 28, 2007

A $400-million plan to link northwest British Columbia to the province's electricity grid is indefinitely "on hold" without a major private sector investor to provide seed money for the transmission project, Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Richard Neufeld said Tuesday.

Galore Creek Mining Co. was supposed to put up $158 million to get the transmission line started, but that commitment evaporated on Monday when Galore principals Teck Cominco and NovaGold announced they were halting development of their northwest B.C. mine project due to a stunning increase in development costs.

The northwest transmission line is regarded by the mining industry as the catalyst to development of several promising metal and mineral deposits in the area -- those deposits are effectively stranded at present by lack of access to the BC Hydro grid.

Northwest communities now rely on diesel generators to produce electricity.

Only last month, Premier Gordon Campbell announced at a mining conference in Vancouver that the transmission project, to run along the Highway 37 corridor in the vicinity of Telegraph Creek, had been approved.

But B.C.'s approval was contingent on substantial contributions from the private sector, and Galore's suspension meant there was no longer money to get the project started.

The Mining Association of B.C. expressed the hope that the provincial government would find a way to keep it moving.

"It wasn't just about Galore although that was a significant anchor for it," association president Michael McPhie said in an interview.

But Neufeld noted that without Galore, there wouldn't be a customer for the large volume of power that the planned 247-kilovolt, 335-kilometre line would bring into the area.

"Our immediate response obviously, unless we hear something different from Galore Creek, is that the transmission line would be put on hold," Neufeld said.

"They were the main contributor -- $158 million. But also the only consumer -- other than to get some of the communities on to the electricity grid immediately.

"Until we get some sense that there is maybe someone else out there who would maybe want to consume that kind of electricity and actually contribute substantially to the construction of it, I think it's prudent for government to say, 'Well, why would we build a line up there that's not going anywhere?' "

Last May, Teck and NovaGold announced a partnership to develop Galore Creek at a projected cost of $2 billion, with employment for 1,000 workers for four years during the construction phase, and 500 permanent mining jobs lasting at least 20 years.

However, a new study of costs associated with building an earthen tailings dam and rerouting a waterway came in far higher than anyone had anticipated -- a projected total development cost of $5 billion.

Association for Mineral Exploration BC president and CEO Dan Jepsen said members are "deeply concerned" about the fate of the transmission project.

"People are quite discouraged right now," Jepsen said in an interview. "There is no doubt in my mind that if the power commitment was carried out we would see an escalation in exploration interest in the area and hopefully the discovery of some additional deposits up there.

"The exploration community certainly wouldn't be in a position to provide financial support to the powerline. Some of the other projects that would benefit, that is the [proposed] mines, are probably running numbers right now to see how their whole project fits together."
ssimpson@png.canwest.com