While Canada’s Arctic natural gas remains long regulatory proceedings and a pipeline mega-project away, a new frontier is opening up that some say is on par with the Mackenzie Delta and Beaufort Sea. The good news is, this new play is right in the backyard of producers.

An area rated by earth scientists as potentially just as “prospective” — and maybe moreso — is about to start opening up within easier reach of the established pipeline system in northeastern British Columbia.

The new target emerging on the industry’s radar screens is the Muskwa-Kechika Management Area. Spread over an area of 25,600 square miles about the size of Vermont, the region lies to the west of Fort Nelson and stretches from the vicinity of the BC boundary with the Northwest Territories south towards the northwest-trending Rocky Mountains. As a resource target, the area stands out as a Canadian counterpart to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. But there is a Canadian difference.

The BC region is set apart because patient, quiet negotiations long ago skipped the emotional fuss that talk of even partially opening up ANWR provokes. The Muskwa-Kechika is defined by a political compromise that simultaneously protects its most sensitive features and opens most of it up to industry provided it behaves responsibly. About two-thirds of the region is potentially available to gas development as a resource management zone, outside of 6,400 square miles set aside as off-limits parks.

Five years after an agreement-in-principle on access that included the petroleum industry, Aboriginal and environmental interests, the BC Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management has made the opening move towards letting in the gas hunters. The step came in the form of a formal posting of a consultation draft outlining “pre-tenure plans,” or practical requirements for gaining entry by taking out resource leases.

The provincial government’s action, while taken with no public fanfare at all, immediately caught the eyes of senior Canadian geotechnical and engineering firms. APA Petroleum Engineering Inc. launched a study of gas-field development concepts as a co-operative venture with Petrel Robertson Consulting Ltd., North of 60 Engineering Ltd. and BerchaEngineering Ltd.

The earth-science firms’ invitation to the exploration and production sector to participate in the study (for five-digit sums per subscribing company) pointed to the rich potential of the area but also to the need to conduct thorough advance examination. “This area of northeast BC remains one of the most prospective areas for hydrocarbon accumulation in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, and has been largely unexplored to date,” the group said in a circular to prospective study subscribers. Industry sources add privately that from a technical point of view, the area is less well understood than the Delta-Beaufort region.

Just enough is known to make the Muskwa-Kechika tantalizing. The APA-led study group points out, “Previous work by the BC Ministry of Energy and Mines and the Geological Survey of Canada identified nine prospective (drilling) play trends in northeast BC with an estimated undiscovered resource potential of nearly 20 Tcf. The Muskwa-Kechika Management Area likely contains a significant portion of this resource.”

The Muskwa-Kechika stands out as truly virgin turf for gas exploration. Although mineral prospectors have probed the area for a century and some mining of metals has been done, there are no proven significant oil and gas reserves.

A long lineup of Aboriginal groups put the region to traditional uses and the BC ministry says “important archeological and cultural sites exist throughout the area.” It still has “very high wilderness values,” supporting “the greatest combined abundance and diversity of wild mammals in North America,” forming “a significant, intact predator-prey system.” The big denizens include moose, caribou, grizzly bear, wolves, Stone’s sheep, mountain goat, elk, many fur-bearing species, and in the rivers and lakes Arctic Grayling, and Lake, Bull and Rainbow Trout.

The BC government’s invitation to industry to present pre-tenure plans calls for resource lease-management strategies that avoid permanent harm to the wildlife or Aboriginal rights. The APA group’s study outline recognizes that control over industrial activity will be strict and bound to affect the economics of projects.

The earth scientists and engineers acknowledge that the Muska-Kechika’s status as a protected region is enshrined in BC legislation that declares the province determined “to maintain in perpetuity the wilderness quality, while allowing resource development.” The APA group says, “As a result, oil and gas resource exploitation will be subject to extraordinary challenges and issues, unique to this remote wilderness area.” The tall orders “will undoubtedly have an impact on development schedules and costs, which this study will assess.”

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