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Terry Halifax
Northern News Services
On Monday, Imperial Oil and the Mackenzie Gas Project began an open house to seek out potential customers to help gain an understanding on how the pipeline should be built, said Imperial spokesperson Hart Searle.
"The design and development of the pipeline requires an early understanding of the timing and levels of natural gas shipper requirements," Searle said.
They have taken a phased approach to the pipeline to give additional time to explorers who have yet to determine how much capacity they will require in the pipe.
"It will result in more work than a single request for a binding commitments," he said. "It recognizes the interests of all parties."
The open period runs from June 24 to July 26, but if potential shippers don't respond during the period, Searle said they can still contact the group afterwards.
"At the end of the day, we will work with all interested shippers towards the objective of finalizing firm service agreements, while maintaining a cost-effective and timely start-up for shippers," he said.
The group is seeking any and all early data explorers have regarding quantity and also gas composition data.
They have acknowledged the requests of explorers who needed time to budget on drilling and extracting the gas in time to get on the pipe.
Searle says more shippers involved in the project will make for cheaper tolls.
"The more gas we can put in the pipe, the better the economics will be and the cheaper the tolls will be," Searle said.
The tolls will be subject to National Energy Board approval and will be the same for the producer group and any others who are shipping gas.
While the pipeline will be designed as a Mackenzie Valley line only, Searle said that should Alaska producers bring a pipeline over the top from the North Slope, they would welcome the gas from that project in the Mackenzie pipe.
"If they want to talk about doing something jointly, we're certainly open to that and we're not planning on that basis," he said.
"We do not want to be reliant on what happens with gas from Alaska."
