Only one of BC’s boomtowns

July 31, 2014

The economy of Fort St.John, in north eastern BC, with a population of only 20,000 has slowed down in the past year. Several large projects will ensure the community remains a boomtown.

Ft.St.John is one of only four Canadian cities north of the 56th parallel. The city is the largest regional service centre in northeastern BC, servicing over 60,000 people in the region. Fort St. John is proclaimed as the Energetic City, which reflects not only the city’s large resource base of oil, natural gas, forestry, and agriculture.

• It is home to Canada’s second-largest natural gas producing region and home to the Montney and Horn River basins. The Montney basin is a large natural gas find with an estimated worth of $1.3-trillion.
• Interestingly, Ft.St.John is home the oldest non-native settlement on British Columbia’s mainland.
• The provincial Oil and Gas Commission is centered in the city.
• The unemployment rate is lower than the BC average of 6%. The unemployment rate has jumped 3% in northeastern BC over the past year as oil and gas activity has slowed.
• Trans-Canada is proposing a 315 km north of Ft.St.John to tie in the Montney basin to its mainline network. Construction is due to begin in 2015. The project cost is estimated at $1.5 billion.
• BC Hydro’s giant $8 billion site C project will start construction in the next two years. Site C would be a third dam and hydroelectric generating station on the Peace River in northeast B.C. It would provide up to 1,100 megawatts of capacity, and produce about 5,100 gigawatt hours of electricity each year — enough energy to power the equivalent of about 450,000 homes per year in B.C. Site C is estimated to create approximately 7,000 person-years of direct construction employment through the seven-year construction period.

Commentary

Ft.St.John can look forward to development and prosperity with hydro and natural gas development activities driving its economy.

Sources

• a)http://business.financialpost.com/2014/07/30/fort-st-johns-vibrancy-and-growth-is-fuelled-by-the-natural-gas-industry/?__lsa=f9e8-03c0



• b)http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/LabourIncome/EmploymentUnemployment.aspx#maps



• c)https://docs.neb-one.gc.ca/ll-eng/llisapi.dll/fetch/2000/90464/90550/554112/915551/1060220/983097/981724/A3J8S7_-_North_Montney_Project_-_Project_Description.pdf?nodeid=981635&vernum=-2 and http://www.transcanada.com/news-releases-article.html?id=1747631