Mackenzie pipeline backers seek more time

Imperial Oil, the lead company in the Mackenzie Valley pipeline proposal, has asked the National Energy Board to give it and other backers more time to decide whether they want to build the pipeline if it is approved.

The NEB, a federal regulatory board, is holding hearings in Yellowknife this week on the proposal to build a 1,200-kilometre natural gas pipeline through the Northwest Territories' Mackenzie Valley, from the Beaufort Sea to a hub in northern Alberta.

The proposal is being spearheaded by a consortium of companies led by Calgary-based Imperial Oil that includes ExxonMobil Corp., ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell PLC and the Aboriginal Pipeline Group.

The board, which is holdingfinal hearings on the project this week in Yellowknife and next week in Inuvik, N.W.T., is expected to release its decision in September.

Want 3 more years

The NEB's approval would come with a sunset clause specifyingby when the consortium must decide to begin construction.

Currently, thatdeadline is December 2013, but Imperial Oil representative Don Davies has asked the NEB to extend it to December 2016.

"We're not looking for open-ended approvals, but we all need to be realistic here," Davies said at the hearing.

"The stars would need to align in order for construction of the project to commence by mid-2014."

But Kevin O'Reilly of Alternatives North, a Yellowknife-based social justice group, said the idea of pushing back the sunset clause is unacceptable, given how much time has already been spent deliberating the project.

"We've all burned up a tremendous amount of effort and resources dealing with the [Mackenzie Gas Project] that could have been devoted to building a truly sustainable and diversified economy in the Northwest Territories," O'Reilly told the board.

"Look, I'll admit that I'm a hearing junkie, but I don't want to be left hanging around for another six years waiting for the proponents to make up their mind while governments ignore the [joint review panel's] recommendations."

The joint review panel was set up to assess the pipeline's environmental and socio-economic effects. Itconditionally approved the pipelinein December 2009 contingent on the implementation of176 recommendations for mitigating a range of potential negative impacts.

Group asks NEB to limit pipeline capacity

Alternatives North was among several critics of the pipeline who appeared as interveners in this week's hearings.

O'Reilly urged the board not to approve the project. If it does give it the nod, it should ensure that the review panel's recommendations are implemented, he said.

He also asked the board to limit the pipeline's capacity from the current proposal of 1.2 billion cubic feet per day to 0.83 billion cubic feet per day.

"What we know now is that we have three anchor fields that can produce 0.83 [billion cubic feet]," O'Reilly said. "They want to build a pipeline to [produce] 1.2. Where is the rest of that gas going to come from? What are the footprints that are going to be associated with that?

"If all that anyone is committed to ship is 0.83, we don't understand why they've applied to [ship] 1.2, and we certainly expect or hope that you will not issue a certificate above 0.83 if you issue one at all.

"It's a slippery slope, and once we start down that path whether it's 1.2 or 1.8 or, indeed, more how do we control that?"

O'Reilly accused Imperial Oil of dismissing the review panel's recommendationsfor how tomitigate the potential cumulative impacts of the pipeline.

He argued that the pipeline backers should have to waituntil all related amendments to environmental legislation that might be needed to protect wildlife and nature near the pipeline are passed before proceeding with the project.

"It's not done, and I'm sorry if the proponents get caught in the middle of that, but that's the law," he said.

"The work should be done. It needs to be done before you issue a certificate, before the project goes ahead."

Other pipeline critics, like Yellowknife filmmaker France Benoit, argued that the world needs to be weaned off natural gas and other fossil fuels.

"We are a people abandoned by our leaders," Benoit told the three representatives of the board leading the hearing. "So, we got you, three grandfathers, who will set us on a course a course that will be lived by our grandchildren.

"I know they will be an angry lot. They will ask us, 'So, what did you do to make the world a better place for me?'"