Three years late and $10 million over budget, the Joint Review Panel for the proposed Mackenzie Gas Project (MGP) released its report Wednesday afternoon.

Assuming its recommendations are followed, the panel “concluded that the adverse impacts of the Mackenzie Gas Project and the northwest Alberta facilities would not likely be significant and that the project and those facilities would likely make a positive contribution towards a sustainable northern future.

“In the panel’s view, the Mackenzie Gas Project and the associated northwest Alberta facilities would provide the foundation for a sustainable northern future. The challenge to all will be to build on that foundation.”

The report is composed of two volumes and a 52-page executive summary. Among the topics addressed are air and water quality; fish and marine mammals; wildlife; conservation management and protected areas; harvesting; land use and heritage resources; economic, social and cultural impacts; and sustainability.

The proposed $17 billion MGP and its associated NOVA Gas Transmission Ltd. project would be the largest construction project ever undertaken in Canada by private corporations. The MGP consortium consists of Imperial Oil Resources Ltd., Imperial Oil Resources Ventures Ltd., Shell Canada Ltd., ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil Canada Properties and the Mackenzie Valley Aboriginal Pipeline LP. The panel’s report constitutes the environmental and socioeconomic impact assessment, which is a necessary first step in the review of the project.

Canada’s National Energy Board is to begin its hearings on the project in April and will incorporate the panel’s recommendations in its decision on whether the project may proceed. A decision could come in September.

The review panel’s mandate requires it to have regard to the protection of the environment from any significant adverse impacts of the proposed developments and to the protection of the existing and future social, cultural and economic well-being of residents and communities.

The panel concluded its public hearings in Inuvik on Nov. 29, 2007. It held a total of 115 hearing days, collected more than 5,000 written submissions and received thousands of recommendations. The panel held 40 days of informal hearings to listen to northerners in 27 communities that would be affected by the route of the proposed 758-mile Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. Another 75 days of technical hearings were held in the five largest communities from Inuvik to Hay River.

The panel’s hearings dragged on for months longer than National Energy Board sessions related to the project, and the panel’s report was repeatedly delayed (see Daily GPI, March 6).

The project, which was first dreamed up in the 1970s, could carry up to 1.9 Bcf/d of gas from fields in the Mackenzie Delta region near the Beaufort Sea. According to the panel’s report, the MGP consists of:

Some have speculated that the advent of productive shale gas plays in the Lower 48 U.S. states might make a northern gasline, as well as a pipeline to tap Alaska’s North Slope reserves, uneconomic. In April a ConocoPhillips Canada executive said the MGP had a good chance of beating an Alaska gas pipeline project to serve markets in the Lower 48 (see Daily GPI, April 6).

The continued delay of the MGP this spring prompted Calgary-based producer MGM Energy Corp. to strike an agreement with Chevron Canada Ltd. and BP Canada to restructure an existing farmout agreement, allowing it to delay drilling and seismic activity (see Daily GPI, May 6).

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