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Yukon wants gas line action Fentie urges Ottawa to restart agency to update Foothills certificates for Alaska line Gary Park For Petroleum News
The Yukon, with a wary eye on the threat posed by imported LNG, wants the Canadian government to reactivate a 30-year-old agency created to oversee the planning and construction of an Alaska Highway gas pipeline across Canadian territory, Premier Dennis Fentie said.
The Northern Pipeline Agency, under which the federal government issued certificates granting a pipeline right of way through the Yukon to TransCanada unit Foothills Pipelines, should refresh the status of those certificates, he told an Arctic Gas Symposium in Calgary.
“That would be a very constructive step,” Fentie said.
He said the Yukon — which endorses both the Alaska and Mackenzie gas projects, but gives “high priority” to a pipeline from Alaska — believes Gov. Sarah Palin’s Alaska Gasline Inducement Act and the successful application by TransCanada bode well for the Alaska project.
“From our end, we are working hard to ensure we are pipeline ready,” said, noting that the Yukon is working collaboratively with its neighboring jurisdictions to provide “regulatory certainty” for the project.
“If we don’t champion the (Alaska and Mackenzie) projects who will?” Fentie asked. “If we don’t champion these projects, they may not happen.”
He has no doubt about the validity of the original certificates granted to Foothills, but concedes the arguments between TransCanada and Enbridge over whether Foothills has exclusivity is “something the Yukon is not involved in.”
“Our position is clear,” Fentie said. “This is a big project that will require partnership by industry, whether it be producers or others. We encourage the producers and TransCanada to come together and form a corporate relationship that can benefit from the asset we have in the Yukon.”
Beaufort development urged On other matters, Fentie urged Canada’s federal politicians to reach an agreement with his government to develop oil and gas resources in the portion of the Beaufort Sea that extends from the Yukon’s coastline.
He pressed the Canadian government to start negotiations with his government on shared management and revenue sharing in the Beaufort, giving the industry regulatory certainty.
Fentie said he hopes the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and the Canadian government can reach an accord for the Beaufort, where an Imperial Oil-ExxonMobil Canada partnership bid more than C$500 million last year for Beaufort rights and five more areas are up for bids this year.
He noted that, in addition to its eight onshore oil and gas basins which hold an estimated 17 trillion cubic feet of gas and 800 million barrels of oil, the Beaufort offers the prospect of 40 tcf of gas and 4.5 billion barrels of oil.
In addition, the Yukon will begin a call for bids by late April for two parcels in the resource-rich Peel Plateau in northern Yukon.
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