Green Groups Seek Freeze on Canada Arctic Pipelines
Date: 31-Aug-07
Country: CANADA
Author: Jeffrey Jones
Several environmental and social activists began
submissions Thursday to the regulatory panel probing the
C$16.2 billion (US$15.3 billion) Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline on
the proposed development's cumulative effects.
They said the line's backers, led by Imperial Oil Ltd
, have not addressed impacts of future gas exploration
that the project would spawn in the far North or the greenhouse
gases that would be emitted when the fuel is burned.
"An increasing number of people realize that we're not
ready to sacrifice our Northern values and ecosystems, so
perhaps a moratorium is actually the smartest way to go, and
maybe the Joint Review Panel will be recommending this," Pete
Ewins, conservation director with World Wildlife Fund, said
before his appearance at the hearing in Yellowknife, Northwest
Territories.
He joined representatives of the Canadian Arctic Resources
Committee, Alternatives North, Sierra Club and Pembina
Institute in a conference call with reporters.
Ewins compared the situation to the late 1970s, when a
judge, Thomas Berger, banned pipeline development in the vast,
sparsely populated region for years so native groups and the
government could solve numerous land claims.
Now, regulators should demand that a network of protected
areas and a comprehensive land-use plan is in place before a
pipeline that would open up the region to major oil and gas
operations goes ahead, Ewins said.
"As most Northerners have been saying, 'We sort of do want
a pipeline now, but not at any cost,"' he said.
The Mackenzie proposal would ship up to 1.9 billion cubic
feet of gas a day 1,200 km (750 miles) to southern markets from
the Mackenzie Delta on the Beaufort Sea Coast.
It has been hit with a number of setbacks, leading at least
one of the proponents to question its viability publicly.
Earlier this year, Imperial and its partners, Royal Dutch
Shell Plc, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Corp
and the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, more than doubled
the cost estimate, blaming runaway inflation in labor and
materials costs as well as regulatory delays.
They are in talks with Ottawa aimed at winning some
financial breaks to improve the project's economics.
The hearings, conducted by the Joint Review Panel and
National Energy Board, were originally slated to wrap up at the
end of 2006.
Imperial's application should deal with impacts of
exploration beyond the three fields that will feed the pipeline
initially as well as the carbon dioxide emitted when the gas is
burned in its end use, said Sierra Club lawyer Keith Ferguson.
Matt McCulloch, co-director of the Pembina Institute's
corporate consulting division, said carbon dioxide from the
Mackenzie gas project and the fuel's end use would push
Canada's greenhouse gas emissions 10 percent further away from
its Kyoto Protocol commitment.
Canadian emissions are already 30 percent above the target
of 6 percent below 1990 levels, McCulloch said.
(US$1=$1.06 Canadian)
