The recent Fort St. John Energy Expo gave an indication of an emerging northern B.C. boom town in the midst of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry.
“Fort St. John is the centre of it all,” said keynote speaker Bill Gwozd, vice-president of gas services for Ziff Energy, an energy consulting firm. “This is where the gas is going to start from. Production is going to grow. Transportation is going to grow. You're going to need more people. You're going to need more of everything.”
One thing this city of 18,000 needs is housing. The apartment vacancy rate is 1.5%, according to a spring survey by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., and the average rent, at $1,073 per month for a two-bedroom apartment, is just behind Dawson Creek and third only to Vancouver.
According to BC Assessment, the value of a Fort St. John house shot up 8.8% in the past year to $348,000, the highest of any northern B.C. community.
It appears housing demand will stay strong. There are 15 resource projects in various stages of development, two of which would transport natural gas produced in British Columbia and Alberta to Oregon, where it would be liquefied and shipped. The other 13 would be based on B.C.'s northwest coast.
Then there is the $8 billion Site C dam, planned by BC Hydro, just seven kilometres from town. Last week, BC Hydro issued a request for proposal for contractors to clear staging land for the project – even though the dam has not yet been approved.
Most of the LNG investment decisions have also yet to be announced, but Gwozd suggested companies are holding back from making formal announcements as long as possible to maintain a competitive advantage for themselves.
“The [final investment] for many of these companies has already been committed,” Gwozd told the Alaska Highway News. “They just haven't announced anything. They don't have to announce it. There is no urgency on their part to go public.”
Northern Lights College student Joel Lenz was at the expo to look for job opportunities in the industry. The longtime resident of Fort St. John, where the unemployment rate is about 4%, is a fourth-class power engineering and gas process operations student and will graduate at the end of June.
He is excited about working in the northern B.C. energy industry.
Fort St. John is likely going to need more graduates like Lenz – and a lot more of everything else.
