Our Offering
Ready for initiation of a consultative regulatory process, the ALL-CANADIAN Western Energy Corridor includes detailed technical and economic reports, draft regulatory filing information, and detailed photomosaic corridor mapping to provide a two-way connection between Western Canada and tidewater at Churchill, Manitoba.
From early 2010 to late 2018, a rush of energy infrastructure players sought to develop new corridors to transport natural gas, oil, and NGLs from regions within British Columbia and Alberta to the British Columbia coastline. Literally billions of dollars were expended by more than 12 unique players during this time period, each believing that they could develop a route or corridor across British Columbia to benefit their individual investment requirements. Even with multiple levels of government and investor support, virtually all failed. This free-wheeling competitive experience destroyed large amounts of capital and stressed the limits of those concerned about the environmental impact of new resource development. Unfortunately it may have also created consultation fatigue with stakeholders and Indigenous peoples. This experience and the publicly charged part of Canada’s political and economic history has caused many to question the value of competing resource corridors, versus the opportunity to economically and environmentally compete for the use of a predefined, well planned, multi-use corridor, which minimizes environmental impacts.
This is where the experience and knowledge of the Western Energy Corridor Inc. (WEC) team is ready to provide a corridor product that is of high value to infrastructure players or governments that see the benefit in developing a multi-use corridor. The work material being offered by WEC is equivalent in nature to similar feasibility development work products, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, as expended by some of the infrastructure developers seeking to develop a credible rights-of-way corridor across British Columbia.
The Western Energy Corridor team has developed a sustainable energy corridor to:
provide for multi-province transport of renewable energy,
transport large volumes of western Canada’s oil and or natural gas to Hudson Bay tidewater for access to Canadian and international markets,
potentially transport hydrogen or other low-carbon fuels, as global energy markets transition to new energy forms, and
transport green hydro power, by high-voltage DC power line, from Manitoba, westward, to meet the electricity demand of Canada’s western provinces and to reduce Canada’s overall GHG emissions.
The Western Energy Corridor material is development work typically completed prior to the more costly regulatory development phase that includes Indigenous and social interaction, detailed environmental analysis and engineering design work, and other high-cost project components. Based on recent large-infrastructure regulatory work, an experienced developer can anticipate expending at least $400 million (or considerably more) on the remaining work needed to receive government approval to construct. Completed capital costs of typical, environmentally focused pipeline and required export facilities will be in the order of $30 - $40 billion each.
Creating new, high-value work materials for the advancement of transporting Canada’s resources
The Western Energy Corridor work materials include:
Identification of a Preferred Corridor that has been optimized to accommodate multiple types of linear uses, following the evaluation of various Alternative Corridors.
Detailed photomosaic corridor maps generated using ArcGIS.
Detailed report including technical and economic evaluation of the proposed corridor, including description of market egress to provincial regions, northern communities, Atlantic and Eastern Canada, and international markets.
Draft regulatory filing documents for initial regulatory submission.
Report material includes development stage analysis of representative projects that could utilize the corridor (natural gas, oil, hydro power, new sovereign roads and rail, renewable energy sources), including estimated facility costs, and preliminary toll analysis.
A meticulously studied, “no-consultation” corridor of the entire 1,560 kilometre preferred route has been digitized into photomosaic corridor maps.
A draft Initial Project Description, needed for the Impact Assessment Act for large projects, has been prepared.
Likewise, the report material also considers other alternative future uses such as bulk hydrogen transportation and improved resource movement. Select portions of the above materials allowed for preparation of a draft document in advance of a formal Initial Project Description, as required by the Impact Assessment Act for large projects proposed within Canada.
The Western Energy Corridor Draft Initial Project Description was developed based on a natural gas transmission system “sample” project. Conceptually, this natural gas transmission system would provide natural gas to new and existing gas consuming regions within Canada and for export globally by way of a world-class LNG export facility. Eventually, as global markets transition to other more low carbon intensity fuels, the pipeline could be technically planned to move hydrogen or other future fuels.
This work material is envisioned for purchase and use by infrastructure development companies, governments, equity investors, public pension funds and others. The highly detailed information was prepared to clearly define the Western Energy Corridor and is being made available to be part of the purchaser(s) overall plan to develop, transport, and market Canada’s high-value resource commodities. Any of these project ventures will represent tens of billions of investment dollars and will return multiples of that amount in total economic return to all of Canada. The Western Energy Corridor is intended to accommodate one or multiple pipelines (such as oil, natural gas, or natural gas liquids), above ground or buried electric transmission lines, and other related infrastructure, such as access and maintenance roads, compressor stations, pump stations, etc.