Dave Sullivan
Northern News Services

Hay River (Nov 19/01) - Residents of Hay River's Dene Reserve made a smart move joining the oil and gas industry, speakers at a grand opening said Thursday.

After eyeing successful moves by Fort Liard into the booming energy industry, the Hay River Reserve waded in with a $750,000 investment. The community borrowed the cash to build a warehouse for Northern headquarters of two Alberta oil patch companies -- Chinook Testing Inc. and IROC Systems.

Chinook, a pipe-testing company, has gone into partnership with Hay River's Doug Cardinal and Fort Liard's Honourary Chief Harry Deneron to form Chinook Testing Inc (NWT) Ltd., jointly owned by Chinook Testing Inc. and 4859 Northwest Territories Ltd., a numbered company owned and operated by Cardinal and Deneron. They hold 51 per cent of shares in the joint ventures.

The territorial government gave $100,000 to the companies for training, and gave up title to about three hectares of land.

The site is a former government-funded slaughterhouse that went bankrupt. Plans are to turn the building into a grocery store, while the oil field companies are housed in an adjacent new building.

Hay River Chief Pat Martel told over 100 people gathered Thursday in the new building "If you talk about education for young people, you've got to have something for them to look forward to. I can go back into the bush and do the things my father taught me, but that's not the way it is today. We have to move forward. In order to do something like this, you have to involve the people who know how."

Deneron told the same audience "There's no sense waiting for land claims to be settled for the next ten years. We need to capture all the opportunity now."

With no customers yet, Chinook Testing's half-million dollar investment in the region so far means "rolling the dice," President and CEO John Roth said in an interview.

He's looking at a bigger picture, with an eye on testing steam lines at NWT's diamond mines.

He knows the mining companies look for joint ventures with aboriginal-owned companies."I knew this could be a marketing tool."

Roth says his company's investment does not depend on a Mackenzie Valley pipeline going ahead, and he isn't too worried about cuts to Northern drilling programs this winter. "The slowdown will make things more manageable. There was already a shortage of qualified manpower," he said.

Chinook Testing hires people trained in radiography and ultrasonics, and so far has trained six aboriginal Northerners in the trades.