Deal Boosts Support For Expansion At Ridley Terminals

Monday, February 14, 2011 04:11 AM

Prince Rupert, B.C. – Expansion plans at Prince Rupert’s Ridley Terminals have received another boost.

Western Coal has signed an amended terminal services agreement with Ridley Terminals Inc. Western says the long-term deal will help it expand production levels at its facilities in Canada. The company exports most of its metallurgical coal to Asia-Pacific markets to meet the growing demand by steel makers.

"Western Coal's engine room of growth is in northeast British Columbia, where we continue to fuel regional economic activity through expansion of our operations including the recently reopened Willow Creek mine," Keith Calder, President and CEO of Western comments. "The amended Agreement provides the stability that underpins Western's growth plans for further investments and job creation as we expand our production to over 6 million tonnes in the next two years.

Ridley President George Dorsey said, "Western Coal continues to be Ridley Terminal's highest volume customer, and this amended long term agreement is significant support for Ridley's expansion plans".

Right now, Ridley can load up to 12 million metric tonnes of coal each year with expansion plans that could see it double to 24 million metric tonnes by the year 2015.

Ridley Terminals recently announced a five-year agreement with second largest U.S. coal producer Arch Coal.

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Posted on Monday, February 14, 2011 04:11 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: Old55 on February 14 2011 7:02 AM

If the coal terminal is to be expanded CN may need to upgrade their tracks.
The number of trains recently appears to be getting near capacity, unless they spend half their time parked waiting to meet another train. I'm not a train expert, but it appears that the derailment in Fort Fraser, (that occurred in the same spot that one happened a few years back) was possibly the result of an accellerating train with too many cars being pulled around that curve without any power in the middle.

Posted by: Andyfreeze on February 14 2011 7:48 AM

I agree olds55!
CN really needs to think about double tracking and upgrading of the entire line from PG to Rupert,as they have been told for many years now.
CN is the stumbling block,not the terminal itself.

Posted by: PrinceGeorge on February 14 2011 9:04 AM

Bean counters have calculated the cost of replacing the frail tracks and bed with heavy duty modern ones and have concluded that it is cheaper to pay the costs of occasional derailments.

Posted by: Andyfreeze on February 14 2011 11:49 AM

I think you're probably right PrinceGeorge!

Posted by: PrinceGeorge on February 14 2011 5:21 PM

Did the same CN suggest that it could transport the oil from the tarsands to Kitimat more safely by rail than a proposed pipeline could?

I hope I am wrong in my recollection of the news.

Posted by: Palopu on February 14 2011 7:50 PM

As far as I know CN Rail upgraded the mainline tracks to Prince |Rupert a number of years ago. Lets not forget that they had two coal trains per day going to Pr Rupert from Tumbler Ridge a number of years ago.

At present you are only getting about one coal train every day, so I dont know why people would think the line is congested.

Maybe when they get the additional coal from Arch, they might get up to the total tonnage that used to be handled from Tumbler.

You will never see the rail track doubled from Jasper to Prince Rupert. There is not sufficient traffic on that line to warrant such an expenditure which would be in the billions of dollars.

There is a good chance that once the Panama Canal Expansion is complete in 2014 that the container traffic from Prince Rupert will decline, and if there is a slow down in the need for coal, in Asia, you would end up with a double tracked railway to nowhere.

There have been a number of long sidings put in to facilitate the mile and a half long Container trains, and these sidings will be sufficient to handle all the coal trains.

You can run a hell of a lot of trains over a single track in a 24 hour period.