Increasing demands and roadblocks by aboriginal groups in Canada are contributing to fears the Mackenzie Valley Gas Pipeline Project may suffer the same fate of a similar Mackenzie project nearly 25 years ago, which was abandoned in the face of aboriginal rights claims.

As an example, the latest salvo by a native Canadian group was a protest against an aerial survey in the central Northwest Territories by planners of the pipeline project. Aboriginal claims apparently apply to air space as well as land, according to a complaint letter noting in bold, oversized type that “HIGH LEVEL FLIGHTS UNACCEPTABLE AND UNAUTHORIZED.” Implying that the flights amounted to spy plane activity, the letter warned, “You are hereby given notice that any work done on and/or over the K’ahsho Got’ine Lands that are for the gathering of information towards the building of the Mackenzie Gas Pipeline is not approved.”

The protest was addressed to the ColtKBR engineering partnership which is piecing the project together for the Mackenzie sponsor consortium: Imperial Oil, Shell Canada, ConocoPhillips Canada, ExxonMobil Canada and the Aboriginal Pipeline Group.

But copies also went to the agency that is most often the real and political target of such actions, the National Energy Board. The document was placed in a thickening file of evidence recording steadily heightening tensions among the natural gas industry, federal regulators, territorial authorities and aboriginal agencies. That evidence points to an increasing hard line attitude among members of the aboriginal groups, which is dismaying some of the most optimistic of the project sponsors.

The fuss over the aerial surveys spawned no direct or immediate response from the Mackenzie project consortium, except renewed vows to keep on trying to work with northern aboriginal authorities. Nor were there any jokes about shooting down gas industry aircraft, at least in any public forum. While Canadian natives are celebrated for a sly sense of humor, northern aboriginal rights claims are in no way a laughing matter for anyone concerned.

As senior partner in the C$5-billion (US$3.75-billion) Mackenzie project, Imperial has told the rest of the industry and its shareholders that aboriginal cooperation is essential in order to avoid repeating the 1970s abort of the northern gas proposal’s first incarnation.

The spy plane protest was just one highlight of a trend that culminated in a lawsuit filed earlier this month with potential to grind the project to a halt. The plaintiffs, the Deh Cho of the southern Northwest Territories, show no signs of backing off their demands for a court injunction to halt environmental review of the gas project until federal and other territorial authorities let them appoint two of seven members on the review panel. The next step will be at least some formal, legal reply to the lawsuit’s initial statement of claim. What that will be remains in the creative hands of the lawyers.

While the Mackenzie consortium maintains officially that it is optimistic about eventually winning aboriginal consent and continues to work on it, some signs of frustration have been showing. The mood behind the scenes showed briefly in a summer review of the project’s status by TransCanada PipeLines president Hal Kvisle, who doubles as 2004 chairman of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America.

In a statement plainly aimed at northern aboriginal leaders — and perhaps especially at their lawyers, who in some cases come from outside the Northwest Territories and have no direct stake in northern industrial development — Kvisle suggested the resurrected Mackenzie project is not immortal. Northern rights claims and aboriginal politics were key to the cancellation of the project’s first incarnation in the 1970s and pack the power to kill the new version, Kvisle warned.

For now, TransCanada continues to support the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, a coalition of all the native communities along the Mackenzie route, with a C$80-million (US$60-million) loan to cover engineering, design and regulatory expenses associated with its one-third ownership of the proposed northern gas delivery system.

But the APG also continues to show the good-cop, bad-cop strategy adopted by northern aboriginal political leaders. The Deh Cho had much to do with originating the APG participation in the Mackenzie project back in 1999 and 2000, along with the Sahtu in the central Northwest Territories and the Inuvialuit and Gwich’n on the Mackenzie Delta. But while sitting in on all the planning and negotiations, the Deh Cho are restricting their formal participation to observer status and emphasizing their consent is withheld until the federal government agrees to a wider land claim settlement.

The hard liners on aboriginal rights may be gaining influence across the Canadian north. In the Sahtu region, where the leadership earlier this year made a final partnership agreement to join APG, the K’ahsho Got’ine and their Metis (mixed blood) neighbors nevertheless adopted a rigid policy resolution. The declaration committed the district authorities to make sure “all permits towards work on developing a pipeline cease until the access and benefits agreement is completed and signed.”

The natives demanded an access and benefits agreement by June of 2005. In the meantime, the district land authorities vowed “any research permits and land use permits and water license permits be denied until an access and benefits agreement is signed.” The hard line is not unanimous across the Canadian north and no one has started using the word blockade yet, but industry observers are starting to wonder how, when and even whether the gas project will pick its way through a minefield of aboriginal issues with pedigrees dating back for generations.

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