by Glenn Taylor
Northern News Services

INUVIK (Nov 28/97) - Phase 2 of the project to link Inuvik by pipeline to cheap natural gas is under way.

Workers have completed half of a 50-kilometre overland road to the Ikhil well, site of a future gas production facility bankrolled by the Inuvialuit Petroleum Corporation.

Chair Russell Newmark said he is confident the project will deliver gas to Inuvik's gates by summer of next year.

"Overall, things are going reasonably well," said Newmark from Tuk this week. Newmark said "reasonably well" because of unexpected warm weather, which has slowed road construction work, and delivery of components over the Dempster, which is still closed.

There are still some regulatory hurdles to overcome as well, chiefly with Inuvik town council, which was to give third reading last night on an gas franchise agreement with IPC to allow the fuel through town.

Production approval from the National Energy Board is also outstanding, but Newmark said he expects to receive that later this week. An agreement in principle has been reached with the NWT Power Corporation to be an anchor customer for the gas, but that has also yet to be formalized, said Newmark.

On the construction front, cats and snowmobiles are working to build the road that will be used to haul equipment, and serve as the right of way for a future pipeline.

A helicopter linked by global positioning satellite has been flying overhead, guiding the road construction by dropping directional balloons to workers below.

The road should be completed by early next week, in time for a seismic crew and its gear to rumble up the makeshift highway to Ikhil and begin a three-dimensional survey of the gas site, hopefully by early next month.

Newmark said he hopes the seismic program would be completed before Christmas, to allow for a month of interpretive work in Calgary. This information will then be used to pinpoint a precise target for a drill program in late January which will lay down a production hole for the project.

With information from that drill, a second "step-out" drill will be undertaken. In the meantime, a $500,000 program to repair the casing of the first hole, drilled in 1986 by well discoverers Gulf Canada Ltd., will be done.

The drilling program will give the project three production holes, and hopefully increase reserves by pinpointing sweet spots where more gas can be tapped.

About a dozen employees are working on the program, and the crew site at Ikhil has been fired up again for the winter program. (The camp was left on the site on pilings during the summer.)

If all goes well this winter, a final design for the pipeline should be completed by March or April of next year, said Newmark, and delivered by barge to the site by next summer.

With pipeline construction set to begin in winter of 1998-99, Newmark is confident the project should be complete and at the town's doorstep by June 1999.

IPC spent about $1.5 million last winter testing the Ikhil reservoir. This phase of the program will add another $5.5 million to expenditures on the $13-million program.

Discovered in 1986 by Gulf Canada, Ikhil was later sold to Shell Canada Ltd. IPC picked up a 73 per cent stake in the discovery in 1991.