So without much effort, the cost of Muskrat Falls, also known as the island infeed project, has gone from $6.2 billion to $8.9 billion.
That’s without factoring in labour costs.
Alberta is already starting to see skyrocketing costs and worker shortages:
Two years ago, the Alberta government forecast a shortage of 77,000 workers over the coming decade. Since then, that estimate has grown by nearly 50 per cent, to about 114,000 workers.
The Petroleum Human Resources Council says nearly 40,000 new workers will be needed in the energy sector by 2020 just to replace those who retire, plus 90,000 additional oilpatch workers.
No one has given any idea of what labour shortages are going to do to the Muskrat’s costs.
The only thing you can be sure of is that whatever estimates they’ve got now won’t come close to the real cost, if they go ahead with it in the likely labour climate.
- srbp -