Former Canadian Alliance leader and ex-international trade minister Stockwell Day has joined an energy company aiming to build the world’s “greenest refinery” on B.C.’s coast.
Pacific Future Energy (PFE) announced August 21 Day would serve as a senior adviser, a boardroom director and the chairman of its advisory committee.
"We believe it is critical to Canada's national strategic interest to gain access to international markets for Alberta's oil. As the former federal regional minister for British Columbia, and a former Alberta cabinet minister, I have a unique vantage point from which to understand what it takes to make this happen," Day said in a statement.
Vancouver-based PFE announced in June it planned to build a $10-billion refinery capable of processing up to 1 million barrels of bitumen a day.
The facility would be constructed in separate modules, the first of which would process 200,000 barrels daily.
PFE said the refinery would use near zero net carbon emissions technology to keep the project environmentally sound.
Ottawa approved Texas-based Enbridge’s (TSX:ENB) Northern Gateway pipeline project in June. The 1,177-kilometre twin pipeline is set to run from northern Alberta through to B.C.’s northern coast in Kitimat.
If the proposed facility were to be built, it would ship refined bitumen to Asia as opposed to crude oil.
The company said by avoiding shipping crude oil through B.C.’s rugged northern coast, the risks of environmental disasters would be minimized in the event of a spill, as refined bitumen is less harmful than crude bitumen.
PFE chairman Samer Salameh told Business in Vancouver in June it would take seven years to get the facility operating if the government approved the project.
And in a statement released August 21, Salameh said PFE hopes to finalize a refinery site by the end of the year and enter into the regulatory process by 2015.
In 2013, B.C. media mogul David Black also pitched the idea of building a $25-billion refinery off the West Coast.
