Who's afraid of the Alcan wolf?

The mayor of Kitimat expresses satisfaction with the BCUC's decision rejecting Alcan and BC Hydro's agreement on power sales. Suggesting that now is the time for Alcan to return to being a good corporate citizen of Kitimat and return to the business of producing Aluminum and not power.

The Daily News had details on the latest twist in the Wednesday paper.

Wozney welcomes Alcan ruling
By Leanne Ritchie
The Daily News
Wednesday, January 03, 2007

The B.C. Utilities Commission rejection of a power sales agreement between Alcan and B.C. Hydro could affect the company’s future in Kitimat, said Alcan Tuesday.

Last week, the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC) rejected a proposed long-term energy agreement that would see the company sell electricity from its Kitimat-area power plant to provincially owned utility B.C. Hydro.

“We are disappointed with the BCUC decision and will be studying it closely to better understand the commission’s rationale and to determine the potential impact on the feasibility and timing of the Kitimat modernization project,” Michel Jacques, president and chief executive of Alcan Primary Metal Group, said in a statement. Approval of the power contract was one of three conditions Alcan set for the modernization of the Kitimat plant.

The plans would expand the smelter’s annual production capacity by more than 60 percent, pushing it up to about 400,000 tonnes from 245,000 tonnes.

The other two conditions to be met were environmental permits and a labor agreement with the Canadian Auto Workers union, which represents Kitimat workers.

In the meantime, Mayor of the company town, Richard Wozney, said he was pleased to see the commission reject the agreement.

“This was a bad deal for British Columbians. We are very pleased that the BCUC agrees,” said Wozney. “It would have killed the aluminum industry in B.C. and pulled the rug out from under the economy of the Northwest.”

Wozney said the agreement was harshly criticized as a sweetheart deal between Alcan and the B.C. Liberals by a wide range of interveners during the B.C. Utilities Commission public hearings. They included aluminum expert Richard McLaren, MLA for Skeena riding Robin Austin, the Mayor and Council of Kitimat, the BC Citizens for Public Power and the BC Old Age Pensioners Association.

They said the price that was going to be paid to Alcan was unnecessarily high for BC Hydro customers. They pointed out that Alcan is leased a precious public water resource to produce electricity for aluminum smelting, not to sell back to British Columbians at more than a 1,000 per cent profit.

“We hope that Alcan will now return to being the good corporate citizen it once was and get back to the business of smelting aluminum and honouring the agreements it has with the people of British Columbia,” says Mayor Wozney.

“Aluminum is a very profitable business and we will support Alcan one hundred percent if they use this power to build the full-sized smelter they have promised numerous times.”

The Alcan Kitimat smelter modernization program was the largest construction project under consideration for the Northwest region after Enbridge pushed back its Gateway oil pipeline project to 2014.

The modernization of the Kitimat smelter would increase its production by more than 60 percent, ensuring the continuation of approximately 1,000 stable, technically-enriched jobs in B.C.’s Northwest for the long-term, and the modernization would roughly double the 1,000 jobs during the construction phase.