The scale of the regulatory hurdles faced by the Mackenzie Valley Gas Pipeline project in Canada “rivals the complexity and uncertainty of regulatory and policy making found anywhere overseas,” according to gas analyst Paul Ziff.

In a paper presented to the Canadian chapter in the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars recently, Ziff said that even excluding the special case of the unresolved Deh Cho First Nations land claim, the northern economic milieu is complicated to the point of daunting for industry.

The Calgary analyst and founder of Ziff Energy Group wrote “the manner by which the Canadian government resolved First Nations’ land claims has created a complex mix of players, all of equal standing.

“The presence now of more than a dozen bodies of equal authority — land, water and environmental boards — and federal authorities, including the departments of environment and oceans, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and the National Energy Board, in addition to numerous independent bodies in a region with fewer than 100,000 inhabitants, staggers the imagination.”

Although the NEB led creation of a co-operative regulatory review organization for the Mackenzie project in 2002, the process remains untried and success is not guaranteed, Ziff wrote. “The Northwest Territories is a veritable latticework of ‘equal authorities’. It appears that the designers of the First Nations’ land claims settlements — as a necessary and positive step — did not understand the nature of larger projects and issues such as the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, which will benefit the North’s people.”

Meanwhile, Deh Cho First Nations has filed its second appeal to the courts for an injunction to halt environmental review of the proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. The first legal action was taken in the territorial capital of Yellowknife, before the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories. Now the same appeal has been laid before the Federal Court of Canada.

Deh Cho grand chief Herb Norwegian said the northern pipeline regulatory structure is “trampling our rights” by rejecting his tribal government’s demand for power to appoint two of seven members of the review panel. While aboriginal communities with land claim settlements have been granted representation, the Deh Cho still are involved in a battle with the Canadian federal government over their own claims to land in the southern third of the Northwest Territories..

The Deh Cho insist they mean business and their lawsuits are not just negotiating ploys. “This is the only route left to us to protect the interests of people in the Deh Cho communities,” Norwegian said. “There will be no pipeline through the Deh Cho territory because Canada has refused to consider including us in the decision-making process. We will use every means necessary to stop it.”

Officially, the Mackenzie Gas project continues to move ahead. The Arctic production and pipeline development was cited by its senior partner, Imperial Oil, as one of the reasons for its decision Sept. 29 to relocate its corporate headquarters to Calgary from Toronto. But the project missed its previously declared target of making regulatory filings during the summer of 2004 and has stopped stating any target dates. The Arctic gas project is just too big and complex to set firm timelines, corporate officials say.

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