The “gathering momentum” of Alaska’s gas pipeline project is starting to fill the rearview mirror of the Mackenzie Gas Project, bringing some overriding concerns into sharper focus, a Mackenzie spokesman admitted.
What happens in Alaska has been a matter of concern “for some time and will continue to be … no less so and probably more so,” Imperial Oil’s Hart Searle told Petroleum news Feb. 7.
He said that as “elements of certainty” come together in Alaska that will give added motivation to the Mackenzie proponents, led by Imperial.
Because an Alaska pipeline could initially carry close to three times the Mackenzie volumes the “key factors that could impact the commercial viability” of the Mackenzie plans remain the same, Searle said.
Competition for labor, materials, line capacity
The Mackenzie Delta gas owners, pipeline companies and other industry leaders have repeatedly warned that the Canadian project will be in trouble if it has to compete with Alaska for construction labor, materials such as steel and access to spare pipeline capacity.
Searle said that the Mackenzie consortium has no reason yet to “change the broad outline (of its goal to bring the Mackenzie Delta in production by 2009), but we will have to see how the hearing process goes.”
The prospect of regulatory delay has surfaced again this month as the Joint Review Panel examining the Mackenzie application said it would not set dates for public hearings until the proponent fills in gaps where “basic information is missing or inadequate.”
Panel Chairman Robert Hornal, in a blunt Feb. 3 letter to Sandy Martin, the project’s regulatory affairs manager, said that “until sufficient information is filed by the proponent in response to this letter, the panel will not be in a position to schedule further rounds of IRs (information requests) or set the matter down for hearings.”
To allow time for response, the panel extended its deadline to March 31 from Feb. 18.
For now, the partners are dealing with answers to 600-plus requests from the panel, registered interveners including the Canadian and Northwest Territories governments and Canada’s National Energy Board.
If the Mackenzie consortium is to meet its timetable, it hopes hearings can start this spring. “That would be desirable,” Searle said.
Panel rejects claims its breached rules
In the meantime, the panel has decided to proceed with its technical analysis of the major regulatory applications filed last October.
In a Feb. 4 letter it rejected claims by an umbrella group of 15 organizations and individuals that it had breached its rules of procedure for the conduct of an environmental impact assessment.
The coalition, writing under the letterhead of the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, argued that the environmental impact statement filed in October “suffers abundant deficiencies.”
The panel agreed there were “significant information gaps,” but said the statement was sufficiently complete to proceed with the technical analysis.
Hornal: information gaps ‘substantial’
Even so, Hornal’s Feb. 3 letter contained some stinging criticisms, suggesting the proponent failed to “fully appreciate the level of detail” required before public hearings could take place and said the information gaps were “substantial in scope and detail.”
Among the shortcomings, Hornal said there was a lack of information about the impact of a Mackenzie pipeline on communities along the route, and how that impact would be gauged and what plans there were to minimize any harm.
A group representing six federal departments and the Northwest Territories government had asked in December for the panel to stall its work until information gaps were filled.
The Mackenzie consortium suggested the answers could be provided through information requests at a later stage of the process.
But the group replied that it did not even have the information to know what questions to ask.
