Four years after it was first opened, Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipelines is closing down its office at Parkwood Place at the end of this month, but will be seeking new digs in the city in 2017, a company official said Tuesday.
"We are closing the office because the space doesn't suit the needs we have right now, however we are committed to maintaining a presence in Prince George," said Northern Gateway Pipelines communications manager Katherine Coutinho Tuesday in an e-mail exchange with The Citizen.
"Until we find a new space, the employees will be working from home."
She said the office is now too big for Northern Gateway's purposes.
"The office space in P.G. is quite large and that was to accommodate the number of contractors we had working on technical aspects of the project at various points in time. Since we opened the office we have had to scale up and scale down as needed.
"For the last two years we have not been driven by a construction schedule - our priority is to continue to build respectful relationships with First Nations and Métis communities."
She said there have been no job losses as a result of the closure and Northern Gateway, as well as the project's aboriginal equity partners and other project proponents, remain "fully committed to building this critical infrastructure at a time when Canada needs it the most."
The office, formerly home to a branch of Integris Credit Union, was first opened in mid-November 2012.
At the time, Northern Gateway was part way through a lengthy regulatory approval process for the then $6.5-billion, now $7.9-billion, project to ship diluted bitumen from Alberta to Kitimat and, pending National Energy Board approval, the company said the pipeline could be operational by 2018.
The project did win NEB approval but with 209 conditions. They included the provisos to start construction before the end of 2016 and to have commitments from oil producers to ship enough crude on the pipeline to make up at least 60 per cent of its capacity six months before the work started.
In May, Enbridge filed a request to extend the deadline but in June, the Federal Court of Appeal overturned the approval after finding Ottawa failed to properly consult the First Nations affected by the pipeline. As a result, the NEB suspended the process for the request.
As well, upon taking office in 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau imposed a ban on oil tanker traffic on B.C.'s north coast.
But Enbridge remains hopeful.
"While the matter is remitted to the federal government for their redetermination, Northern Gateway will continue to further engage and build meaningful partnerships with First Nation and Métis communities," the company said in a posting on the project's website.
