Canada’s arctic gas production and pipeline consortium won a battle last week to stay on schedule by limiting environmental reviews of the C$5-billion (US$3.7-billion) pipeline project. Authorities in Ottawa and the Northwest Territories turned down demands by conservationists to include an analysis of broad environmental effects of the project’s development.

Environmental groups, led by the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee and the Sierra Club of Canada, had called for an investigation of the northern project’s consequences for carbon-dioxide emissions and global climate change. Their appeal potentially opened up a major can of worms by centering on likely use of the gas in Alberta oilsands projects, which are renowned for high greenhouse gas emissions.

Forecasts by TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. and the National Energy Board suggest that gas consumption for accelerating oilsands production could triple to about 1.8 Bcf/d within about 10 years. The plans for the arctic pipeline project include an expansion to serve the northeastern Alberta oilsands region.

TransCanada and the arctic consortium — Imperial Oil, Shell Canada, ConocoPhillips Canada, ExxonMobil Canada and the Aboriginal Pipeline Group — succeeded in persuading the regulators that northern gas and oilsands projects are independent of one another. The industry insisted that decisions on the two projects, the pipeline and the oilsands development, should be made separately, but all the producers in the arctic gas consortium are also active in the oilsands.

The arctic review was conducted by a joint panel of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board and the Inuvialuit Game Council. Canadian practice to date has been to confine environmental reviews to industrial developments that are directly connected and attributable to the new projects involved, and that do not undergo separate examinations by other authorities.

The rules, which have survived repeated challenges by conservationists, are intended to keep Canadian environmental regulation moving at a businesslike pace and to prevent duplication between federal authorities on one hand and provincial or territorial agencies on the other. The arctic project’s review included the issues of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change but limited the matters that will be regarded as relevant.

The joint panel is expected to examine the sources, quantity and frequency of emissions from operations, malfunctions, accidents and fugitive leaks from arctic gas production facilities on the Mackenzie Delta and by the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline, plus measures to manage the greenhouse gases. The climate change part of the review will concentrate on how global warming is expected to affect construction, operation and eventual abandonment of the arctic gas facilities.

Northern projects are one field in which all participants in the industry accept the prospect of climate change as a reality because arctic operations are highly sensitive to temperature variations which affect ice roads, rights-of-way and construction.

Conservationists have one more chance to widen the environmental review in a comment period on the draft terms of reference. But the period is short, expiring July 15. And the critics are given little chance of succeeding, not least because they have few potential allies among the aboriginal majority of residents in northern Canada against the 21st Century reincarnation of the arctic gas project.

“A great deal has changed,” Aboriginal Pipeline Group (APG) president Bob Reid observed. His group is only the most obvious change. Composed of three of the four aboriginal First Nations astride the Mackenzie pipeline route — with the fourth holding observer status and expected to sign on following completion of land-claim negotiations — the APG has a one-third interest in the project and vigorously promotes it.

Reid said a key component of gaining aboriginal support has been the impact of the Internet. Electronic communication has come a long way in curing old information and communications headaches that used to go with the harsh climate, sparse population and isolation of communities in northern Canada, said Reid.

Since hiring on with the native consortium last fall, the former TransCanada executive has been pleasantly surprised to see the grid reaches every settlement that is even remotely affected. Computers and the Internet have not only spread all along the 1,220-kilometer route of the proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline — they are accessible to residents and are being used, Reid said.

The digital traffic, underway since the Canadian northern gas revival began four years ago, is expected to surge when the project sponsors submit their formal construction applications this summer.

A federal “participant funding program” makes about C$1.5 million (US$1 million) available to help cover northern intervenors’ costs ranging from stationery to legal fees and telephone bills. All documents, including instructions for participating in the process, are posted on the Internet by an information agency the federal government created in Yellowknife to serve as the portal or entry point to the arctic gas development, the Northern Gas Project Secretariat (www.ngps.nt.ca).

Messages that emerge from the digital northern village will be taken seriously. Reid said industry learned from the original 1970s inquiry on the project, which concluded that a 10-year moratorium had to be imposed on development to give northern natives time to prepare.

“History has proven it was the right decision,” Reid said, and not just because gas prices later collapsed. “Proceeding at that time would have resulted in serious damage socially, culturally and economically.”

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