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Heat on Mackenzie panel Strong opposition to delay in release of findings, now set for end of this year Gary Park For Petroleum News
A panel reviewing the proposed Mackenzie Gas Project pipeline is under pressure to release its findings within three months and not at the end of 2009.
According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., the two agencies that founded the Joint Review Panel in August 2004 along with then-federal Environment Minister Stephane Dion, have demanded that the panel hasten its work.
CBC said it has obtained a letter to panel Chairman Robert Hornal from the chairmen of the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board and the Inuvialuit Game Council, which have legislated environmental assessment responsibilities along the proposed pipeline route.
The letter dated Dec. 23 and signed by Rick Edjericon and Frank Pokiak said the recently announced December 2009 completion date for the panel’s work “came as a major surprise when we had recently been led to believe that a reasonable expectation would be for the English version of the panel’s final report to be available by the end of March 2009, with the final published report to be available by the end of June 2009.”
“The revised length of the (panel’s) environmental impact review process is now significantly longer than that originally set out in the (2004) agreement and the investment of time and resources has to date been much greater than had been anticipated as being necessary for this review.”
March 31 requested date The letter said the panel should release a “decision document” by March 31, followed by “supplementary documents” by Aug. 31. There has been no immediate response from the panel.
The panel is mandated to deliver recommendations on the MGP’s environmental and socioeconomic impacts to responsible federal cabinet ministers, the National Energy Board, the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board, and the Inuvialuit and responsible authorities.
Faced with sifting through a mountain of submissions and 11,000 pages of transcripts from 115 hearing days — amounting to one of the most comprehensive environmental impact review processes in Canadian history — the JRP has kept stretching the timetable for completion of its report since the hearings wrapped up in late 2008.
The MGP co-venturers, led by Imperial Oil, had hoped for NEB approval in 2008 and all regulatory approvals in 2009, allowing gas to start flowing from the Mackenzie Delta in 2014.
Imperial disappointed A month ago the JRP disclosed it would not release its report until December 2009.
“We understand that there is tremendous interest in the panel’s findings, but we are required and committed to base our findings on a full and fair review of the evidence,” Hornal said in a statement.
That came just days after federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice, the cabinet minister responsible for overseeing the MGP, said he expected the JRP to deliver its report no later than May 2009.
Word of a further delay prompted a sharp reaction from Imperial, whose spokesman Pius Rolheiser said the new target date was “well beyond anything we had expected … (and was) clearly a disappointment for us and the project.”
Prentice said he, too, was disappointed to hear the revised timeline.
Northwest Territories Premier Floyd Roland said that as delays piled up, without any clear answer as to why, the confidence of the business community in the NWT was being shaken.
The Inuvik Town Council called for the dismissal of JRP members.
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