Bush pushes for Arctic gas to Lower 48

Gary Park

President George W. Bush is putting the delivery of Arctic gas to Lower 48 markets ahead of all other considerations, including the routing of a pipeline.

“The quicker the better,” he told said during a July 17 meeting with foreign reporters in the White House.

While admitting a pipeline on U.S. soil would “make it easier for me politically,” he said his first priority is “to get the gas there.”

Bush said the reserves of Prudhoe Bay and The Mackenzie Delta could justify either an Alaska Highway of Mackenzie Delta line, but, like others, he suggested the best option might be two pipelines.

“There are perhaps enough reserves to justify an Alaska pipeline. I know there’s enough reserves to justify a Canadian line,” he said, apparently unaware that proven North Slope reserves of about 36 trillion cubic feet are close to four times those of the Delta.

“It’s conceivable we could have both (pipelines), that both would feed the Midwestern market and the Western market.”

The U.S. and Canadian governments have the final say in the eventual route, but, to date, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has remained strictly neutral in the pipeline debate, despite constant pressure from the Northwest Territories government to declare his support for the jobs and economic development that would flow from a Mackenzie Valley system.

But Chretien, during a series of meetings, has made a special effort to draw Bush’s attention to the volume of Mackenzie Delta reserves and Canada’s willingness to help ship that gas to U.S. markets. “The prime minister has already indicated to Mr. Bush in several conversations what his views are,” said a senior official in Chretien’s office.