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Mac critics ‘inflate’ numbers
Gary Park For Petroleum News
Environmental and social activists are seeking a replay of the late 1970s, by calling for a moratorium on pipelines out of the Canadian Arctic until the long-term impacts are known.
They made their case in the final days of hearings by the Joint Review Panel in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and were accused by Imperial Oil, the Mackenzie Gas Project’s lead partner, of presenting distorted information.
A full range of environmental groups — including the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, Alternatives North, Sierra Club, Pembina Institute and the World Wildlife Fund — argued for a network of protected areas and a comprehensive land-use plan before allowing construction of a Mackenzie Valley pipeline to proceed.
Call for another moratorium Pete Ewins, conservation director of the World Wildlife Fund, told a conference call that an “increasing number of people realize we are not ready to sacrifice our northern values and ecosystems.”
He urged the review panel to propose a moratorium when it submits its final recommendations to the National Energy Board, likely in 2008.
Ewins said the situation is similar to the situation in 1977, when former Supreme Court of British Columbia Justice Thomas Berger headed a commission that investigated the first major proposal to develop Mackenzie Delta gas.
As a result, the federal government imposed a moratorium until there was progress on aboriginal land claims.
Imperial: numbers exaggerated Randy Ottenbreit, Imperial’s senior executive on the Mackenzie project, told the review panel Aug. 30 that some of the information being used by the Pembina Institute and the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee has exaggerated numbers relating to the pipeline’s impact.
Contrary to the committee’s claims, he said it would be unlikely that potential fragmentation of the woodland caribou would occur above the tree line.
He said numbers by the institute relating to how many wells and well pads would be used by Mackenzie gas producers were inconsistent with those on the public record.
Ottenbreit said the institute claimed 400 wells would be required, when only 30 would be needed.
Matt McCulloch, co-director of the institute’s corporate consulting division, said carbon dioxide from the Mackenzie project and the end use for Delta gas would see Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions move another 10 percent beyond Kyoto Protocol commitments, noting Canada is already 30 percent above those targets.
The panel hearings, which concluded Aug. 31, still allow for written rebuttals by interveners.
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