Stephen Harper: Mackenzie Gas now
December 12, 2008
Diane Francis // Financial Post
Ottawa need not sign a single check in order to kick start a gigantic $20-billion economic stimulus project that would also be in the national interest. The feds must short-circuit their dysfunctional system in order to start the Mackenzie Gas Project.
The Project is a proposed 1220-kilometre natural gas pipeline system along the Mackenzie Valley of Canada's Northwest Territories to connect northern onshore gas fields with North American markets. The blueprints have been on the drawing board for 30 years and there is not only enough gas to justify construction but the project will provide the needed infrastructure to open up the rest of Canada’s vast arctic reserves.
The Project has been enmeshed in the usual tangle of federal, and other, regulatory bodies, agencies, bureaucracies and politics.
This week, the Inuvik Town Council demanded that members of the federal Joint Review Panel be terminated after they announced their Mackenzie Project report would not be completed for another year, reported the Northern News Services.
“I don't think there is anyone who isn't frustrated at this point,” said senior Inuvik administrative officer Sara Brown.
Also upset was the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation whose chief executive officer Nellie Cournoyea also criticized the report's delay.
“The Inuvialuit and the residents of the Beaufort Delta communities have once again been let down by the process that was created to ensure the timely environmental review of the Mackenzie Gas Project,” read the Inuvialuit’s Dec. 8 release.
Tough talk in town
The Town of Inuvik's resolution this week was tough-minded and accused the Joint Review Panel of “gross incompetence” and unnecessary delays to the Gas Project.
The council cited financial damages in the form of unemployment and millions in debts incurred to build infrastructure for the gigantic project.
“Therefore be it resolved that the Town of Inuvik calls on the Inuvialuit Game Council, the Mackenzie Valley Impact Review Board and the Honorable Jim Prentice, Minister of the Environment, to repeal the Joint Review Panel agreement and terminate panel members,” read Inuvik’s resolution. “Be it further resolved that the necessary steps be taken by the above-named authorities, and the National Energy Board take the necessary steps to ensure the panel report is completed in a timely fashion.”
Removing the panel members would simply bring about more delays, so Ottawa is better advised to abbreviate its process and bang the necessary heads together to stop perpetuation of another Mackenzie Gas Pipeline “industry”.
Already this panel has held 115 formal hearing days in 27 northern communities, collected 5,000 written submissions, held 40 days of informal sessions and 75 days of technical hearings: Excessively expensive, unnecessarily complicating and unproductive.
Enough already
The Project’s long-suffering partners are Imperial Oil Ltd., ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell Canada Ltd. as well as the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, representing communities in the region. Pipeline company, TransCanada Corp., is a partner in the Aboriginal Group. Costs swelled from C$7 billion to an estimated C$20 billion by last spring, but those are vastly overstated now that the world’s economy has melted down.
The pipeline will allow the eventual production of an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas north of the 70th parallel, equivalent to ten years' of Canadian consumption. There is already up to seven trillion proven reserves of natural gas where the pipeline is going and enough to produce the required 1.3 billion a day.
The biggest holdup is 30 years' of land claims negotiation incompetence between Ottawa and First Nations, latterly the Del Cho nation “hold out”. Ottawa can clear this logjam by becoming a partner, a la Syncrude or Hibernia, the country’s two greatest public-private partnerships.
Ottawa must move immediately for geopolitical reasons too. Approval and construction of the Mackenzie Project will pre-empt the stalled and uneconomic Alaska gas line (remember discredited Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's pet project?) and further establish Canada’s sovereignty over the arctic.
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