Add air travel to the growing list of challenges with which Alberta's boomtown, Fort McMurray, is wrestling.

In addition to concerns over infrastructure and housing needs, the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo is now grappling with how to meet demands for new airstrips that resource developers want to bring online. This is in addition to handling already heavy air traffic flows on Thursday evenings and Monday mornings - times when oilsands employees leave and return to their jobs.

Complicating the issue is the fact that the same airspace is also used by planes flying to and from the Northwest Territories.

Meanwhile, major airlines serving the Fort McMurray Regional Airport say every minute a commercial scheduled flight is delayed can cause ripple effects that cost upwards of $83,000 a minute across their entire network.

Photo courtesy of Fort McMurray Regional Airport
Major airlines say delays at Fort McMurray Regional Airport costs them thousands of dollars.

These delays can arise because airspace is congested and flights are unable to take off at their scheduled time.

In the interim, Wood Buffalo's municipal government, which encompasses Fort McMurray, has imposed a moratorium on any new airstrips until a report on the situation is handed to council.

Wood Buffalo Mayor Melissa Blake says safety is one of the main concerns driving the review. "No matter what airstrip or airport they (passengers) are leaving from, we don't want any airspace conflicts."

The moratorium means that since mid-July, Wood Buffalo council has agreed not to approve any further private airstrips for the region. Blake expects the review to be completed sometime this fall and said for now, everything is on the table.

One possibility that could be considered is enlarging the Fort McMurray airport, which Blake believes would garner support. But she adds that Wood Buffalo doesn't want to hinder companies by forcing everybody to fly through Fort McMurray instead of having their own airstrips closer to their projects. "We want to be as co-operative (with the business community) as we can be."

Another idea is to create a satellite airport closer to some of the oilsands projects that all parties would share, as opposed to various companies each having their own airstrips. There is also talk of changing the hours when oilsands workers leave and return, so air traffic is spread out over different times.

In the meantime, the region has applications for two new airstrips and there could be more, says Darryl Wightman, manager and CEO of the regional airport.

One airstrip, for the Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL) Horizon project, opened at the beginning of September.

Previously approved, the strip will be used to fly construction workers to and from the $10.8-billion oilsands development, 70 kilometres north of the city. Horizon is expected to bring 232,000 barrels of synthetic oil per day online once its final phase is completed in 2012.

A Boeing 737 operated by a partnership of Canadian North and North Cariboo Air is currently scheduled to run about once a week, CNRL officials say. Operational staff are also expected to use the air service, though CNRL anticipates that will be phased out as more staff decide to live in the Fort McMurray region.

Wightman says the CNRL strip is one of two applications, as the company has also had meetings with Imperial Oil. "Both companies were very professional to deal with," Wightman says. "They understand our concerns and are willing to work with us. We are (also) hearing that two more oil companies are putting together applications for airstrips."

Imperial's airstrip, part of its $4.5 billion to $6.5 billion Kearl project - a joint venture by Imperial Oil Ventures Ltd. and ExxonMobil Canada Properties - will also be about 70 kilometres outside Fort McMurray.

Imperial recently filed its regulatory applications for the Kearl project, which could produce as much as 300,000 barrels of oil per day. Company spokesman Pius Rolheiser says the company included an airstrip in the project because its distance from Fort McMurray would add a 90-minute commute each way to a worker's schedule. "That's asking quite a bit of workers," says Rolheiser.

Exact details on the airstrip operations have yet to be finalized, but Rolheiser says it could be a charter operation rather than Imperial operating its own planes, which it has done in some instances. Imperial is planning a camp-based operation, meaning employees would work and sleep onsite, but on a rotational schedule.

Imperial hosted open houses in Fort McMurray last spring, where company officials talked about the project and the camp-based fly-ins and fly-outs. "Some people were strongly supportive, some people less so," says Rolheiser.

"But I think, on balance, the feedback we got from stakeholders was in favour of a camp-based operation. Perhaps a primary factor in that is the physical distance of the Kearl site from Fort McMurray."

The Fort McMurray airport, owned by the municipality of Wood Buffalo, now handles 33 flights per day.

"For first six months of 2005, we have moved approximately 150,000 (passengers) and at this rate it will be approximately three times higher than it was four years ago," says Wightman.

Travellers are overwhelmingly business oriented, accounting for 80 per cent of the traffic. About 20 per cent is leisure travel, says Wightman.

Airlines serving Fort McMurray include Air Canada, Air Mikisew, Corporate Express and WestJet.

The airport is also one a few in Canada that has no user fee in place, adds Wightman, who would like to see it stay that way. He is concerned that resource-company charters could negatively affect the airport if they decide to charge their passengers for the flights - turning them into quasi-commercial airlines, which in turn would pull traffic away from the airport and could necessitate the implementation of an airport user fee.

But Wightman and Blake are taking a conciliatory path.

"No decision will be made until we (all players, including the resource companies) make them together so we can all keep a good working relationship. We are not doing any of this to affect the oil companies," says Wightman. "We have strong beliefs that our concerns are valid and we want to come up with a solution that will work for us all."

(Laura Severs can be reached at laura@businessedge.ca)