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‘Over-the-top’ gasline option could be revived, says NWT premier Kakfwi not ready to rule out northern route once Mackenzie gasline is built; Duncan accuses Fentie of throwing in towel on Alaska Highway project Gary Park PNA Canadian Correspondent
An “over-the-top” gas pipeline from the North Slope is not beyond the realm of possibility once the Mackenzie Valley system is built, said Northwest Territories Premier Stephen Kakfwi.
The so-called Northern Route project, connecting the North Slope and Mackenzie Delta with a line under the shallow waters of the Beaufort Sea, would depend on the people of the Yukon and Alaska as well as the Alaska gas producers, he said in Whitehorse March 13.
Kakfwi made his comments after he and Yukon Premier Dennis Fentie signed an accord for wider cooperation between their governments, signaling the end of an often tense relationship over the timing and routing of Arctic pipelines.
“There is no longer a debate anymore,” he said, noting that the industry is moving ahead with the Mackenzie project.
But, despite an exchange of gifts and handshakes, Kakfwi reopened one of the most contentious issues by refusing to rule out the “over-the-top” option, which has been flatly rejected by the Yukon and Alaska governments, along with the Mackenzie Delta Producers Group. Duncan says Fentie has thrown in the towel In the process, he again locked horns with Fentie’s predecessor, Patricia Duncan, who told reporters that Fentie had “without a doubt … thrown in the towel on the Alaska Highway pipeline route.”
Duncan said Fentie even failed to extract a commitment from Kakfwi that the highway pipeline across Alaska and the southern Yukon, and not the Northern Route, would follow the Mackenzie Valley project.
The end result is that the Yukon is “not even getting crumbs from the table,” Duncan said.
Kakfwi dismissed that claim, saying contractors from the Yukon are already working in the Northwest Territories and, once a pipeline is built, the Yukon will become more attractive to gas explorers.
“Any time a pipeline is built, as it comes further into a new territory, it makes it economic for explorers to go into neighboring areas,” he said.
A Mackenzie pipeline should give impetus to development of the northern Yukon’s gas resources, Kakfwi said. Modified lateral would be shorter Fentie has been pressing for a modified version of the Dempster Lateral, which was originally conceived as a way to connect northern Yukon gas and even Mackenzie Delta gas to the Alaska Highway route.
But the latest suggestion would see a much shorter lateral, feeding into the Mackenzie Valley system.
However, Hart Searle, a spokesman for the Delta producers, told Petroleum News Alaska that the producers are “not at this juncture contemplating” building laterals from either the Yukon or Colville Lake in the Central Mackenzie Valley.
He said those “satellite” producers will “have to figure out a way to get into the (Mackenzie) pipeline.” More discoveries likely However, Searle said the Mackenzie Delta Producers Group has “every expectation that there will be more discoveries” by E&P companies who form the Mackenzie Delta Explorers Group, made up of Anadarko Canada Corp., BP Canada Energy Co., Burlington Resources Canada Energy Ltd., Chevron Canada Resources, Devon Canada Corp, EnCana Corp. and Petro-Canada.
Most of those companies are engaged in current programs to bolster marketable reserve estimates for the Delta and Central Mackenzie Valley, while Devon and Hunt Oil Co. of Canada Inc. are the major leaseholders in the Yukon’s Eagle Plains and Peel Plateau basins.
Major discoveries by any of those players could help the Mackenzie pipeline group expand the planned pipeline from about 1 billion cubic feet per day to 1.9 billion cubic feet per day as well as supply the volumes needed to support one-third pipeline ownership by the Aboriginal Pipeline Group.
Although the Northwest Territories-Yukon document is not legally binding, it pledges that the two territories, in addition to seeking a link on the Mackenzie Valley pipeline to get stranded Yukon gas to southern markets, will cooperate over the next three years on health care, climate change, job training, education, trade and commerce and northern sovereignty issues.
“For me … it is psychological,” said Kakfwi. “It is in keeping with the way we were brought up, than no-one can do well by themselves.”
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