County pleased with Pembina Pipelines announcement

by Morinville News Staff

Pembina Pipeline Corporation has been given the green light under the province’s Petrochemical Diversification Program incentive program. The company has announced they have plans to build their Polypropylene (PP) and Propane Dehydrogenation (PDH) facilities in Sturgeon County’s Alberta’s Industrial Heartland area.

“We are so pleased that Pembina has chosen to expand operations in Sturgeon County, supported by the Province’s Petrochemical Diversification Program incentive,” said Mayor Tom Flynn. “This is important to Sturgeon County and Alberta and will provide significant benefits to Alberta workers and their families.”

Pembina was awarded the go-ahead through a competitive bid process in the province’s Petrochemicals Diversification Program announced in February of this year. The program encourages facilities that use methane or propane to produce materials for plastics, detergents, and textiles, production outputs that do not require pipelines to reach markets.

The County said Pembina’s Redwater Fractionation and Storage Facility Project (RFS II) came into service in the second quarter of 2016. The addition of RFS III is expected to be operational next fall. The Sturgeon County complex, located near Redwater, will be the largest fractionation facility in Canada.

“We have a long-standing relationship with Pembina, and we’ve been working with Pembina Pipeline for over a year to secure lands and to build the parameters for the development of these facilities in Sturgeon County,” said CAO, Peter Tarnawsky in a release Monday.

The new project – announced Monday- has been approved to receive up to $300 million in royalty credits. The project will be a $3.8 billion to $42 billion integrated propylene and polypropylene facility Sturgeon County.

The Pembina/PIC facility will create 2,000 to 2,500 on-site workers during construction, followed by more than 150 full-time operations and head office jobs on opening.

The facility would process about 22,000 barrels per day of propane into polypropylene. Construction is expected to start in 2019, with a 2021 opening.

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