Portage College hopeful for continuing support for Pipeline Training Centre

Portage College officials are hoping the provincial government’ s support for a planned Pipeline Training Centre (PTC) remains leak-free.

Even faced with new realities like low oil prices and a new provincial political party in power, the need for that kind of training hasn’ t gone down the pipe, says Portage’ s president and CEO Dr. Trent Keough.

“Remember...there’ s close to 500,000 kilometres of pipe buried in Alberta,” Keough said. “We need a Pipeline Training Centre because the province is riddled with pipe.”

All of the existing pipes, right down to municipal water and sewer and natural gas lines, need to be maintained and upgraded when necessary, he says. A PTC would provide students with the expertise necessary for upkeep and other work.

“All of these (pipes) have lifespans. All of these things leak. All of these things need to have safety monitoring and controls,” Keough said.

The college intends to build the PTC in Boyle, alongside Portage’ s Heavy Equipment Operator program.

Plans for the facility date from 2014, when a study was commissioned to gauge the need for it and measure stakeholders’ appetite for the training it would provide. The study, conducted by Hanover Research, found there isn’ t a lot of pipeline-related training available through post-secondary institutions in Alberta.

The response from the industrial side-and stakeholders in the oil and gas sector, in particular-was generally positive, but Keough says the PTC won’ t be built just to please oil and gas companies. The need for pipeline training is more widespread than that, he says.

“Listen to municipalities and they’ ll tell you it’ s sometimes hard to find people who can lay water and sewer mains effectively,” said Keough.

Alberta’ s recently elected NDP government has voiced some opposition to major pipeline projects like Enbridge Inc.’ s proposed Northern Gateway, but Keough says he’ s not concerned by the new government’ s stance.

Exporting a product like bitumen through pipelines doesn’ t increase the product’ s value, he says, so the NDP is more on-board with promoting refining and other “secondary processing” activities within this province.

“I think the government has pointed out something a lot of Albertans, including myself as a private citizen and a college president, feel,” Keough said. “Secondary processing is where the real dollars get made. What they’ re saying is, ‘Put the end of the pipe in Alberta, not in Texas.’ ”

Even if projects like Northern Gateway and Keystone XL never come to fruition, the PTC will still have a part to play, he says.

“If we don’ t build another pipeline to the BC coast, if we never build another pipeline to the Gulf of Mexico, there’ s still a whole lot of pipe in Alberta that has to be serviced and managed,” he said. “The Pipeline Training Centre is of critical importance to Alberta-and particularly the fact that Canada doesn’ t have one is another reason why it should get built and it should get built quickly.”

With files from Luke Muise.