Mackenzie Valley Pipeline

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The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline is a proposed project to transport natural gas from the Beaufort Sea through Canada's Northwest Territories to tie into gas pipelines in northern Alberta. The project was first proposed in the early 1970s, but was scrapped following an inquiry conducted by Justice Thomas Berger. The project was resurrected in 2004 with a new proposal to transport gas through the sensitive arctic tundra. Probabilistic estimates of hydrocarbons in the Mackenzie Delta and Beaufort Sea regions project that there are natural gas reserves of 67×10¹² cu ft (1,900 km³).^[1]

1 Background
2 Current proposal
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Background

Main article: Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry

The prospect of a pipeline bringing the natural gas to North American energy markets was originally analyzed in the 1970s with the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry. During that inquiry, Justice Berger heard testimony from diverse groups with an interest in the pipeline. The inquiry was notable for the voice it gave to the First Peoples whose traditional territory the pipeline would traverse. Berger recommended a ten year moratorium on development of the pipeline to deal with issues such as Aboriginal land claims and setting aside of conservation areas. The proposal was effectively shelved.

[edit] Current proposal

The pipeline concept is once again starting to gain steam as the Mackenzie Gas Project. A consortium headed by Imperial Oil Resources Ventures Limited is going through the regulatory process to gain approval for the 1220 kilometre pipeline. The cost of the project is estimated at approximately $16 billion, according to Imperial Oil.^[2] As of mid-March, 2007, revised cost and schedule information included $3.5 billion for the gas-gathering system, $7.8 billion for the pipeline, and $4.9 billion to other economic growth projects planned for three gas field sites in the Mackenzie River delta.^[3] 2010, and also 2014 at the earliest, are current production and start-up milestones published for printed newsletters and on-line webpage articles of the pipeline project.^[4] The pipeline would go south through the Mackenzie Valley to Fort Simpson and then continue south to Alberta. Once in Alberta the pipeline would feed into the existing pipeline infrastructure there.

A notable feature of the current proposal is the participation of First Nations as partners in the project. The Aboriginal Pipeline Group (APG), represents the interests of First Nations in the project. The APG has the opportunity to acquire a one third interest in the pipeline. Four oil companies: Imperial Oil of Canada, ConocoPhillips Canada (North) Limited, Shell Canada Limited and ExxonMobil Canada Properties, hold the interest in the oil fields, a gathering plant at Inuvik, a liquids pipeline from the facility near Inuvik, to Norman Wells and a two-thirds interest in the pipeline.

An article in USA Today (December 8, 2005) entitled "Where conservation and development coexist," speaks in glowing terms of Mackenzie drainage development being guided by "the mantra that's being chanted by an unlikely consortium of environmentalists, Indian tribes, and big industry: conservation first." The article refers to the Boreal Forest Conservation Framework, a charter that calls for protection of fifty percent of the 6,000,000 square kilometres of boreal forest (of which the Mackenzie Valley is a part) in Canada's north.

However, groups such as the World Wildlife Fund of Canada are more cautious in their assessment, pointing out the following fact:

In the Northwest Territories’ Mackenzie Valley, only five of the 16 ecoregions that are directly intersected by the proposed major gas pipeline or adjacent hydrocarbon development areas are reasonably represented by protected areas.^[5]

The Sierra Club of Canada, on the other hand, represents a body of environmentalist thinking that is adamantly opposed to the pipeline due to its perceived environmental impacts:

This $7 billion project—the largest in the history of Canada’s North—would fragment intact boreal forests along the Mackenzie, Canada’s wildest big river, and damage habitat for species such as Woodland Caribou and Grizzly bear. Mackenzie gas is slated to fuel further development of Alberta’s tar sands, which produces the most damaging type of oil for the global atmosphere, through another pipeline to Fort McMurray.^[6]

It is clear that there is a great deal at stake in the Mackenzie Valley: profits for large corporations and needed resources and jobs for First Nations, on the one hand, stacked up against preservation of fragile arctic ecosystems and peoples ways of life on the other. The question remains whether government and industry can engage in an ecologically respectful development process, within economical constraints, that will provide benefits to First Nations as well as other Canadians, without visiting ecological catastrophe on future generations.