Inuvik (Oct 31/03) - The protection of various bird species, waste management and the impact of building more winter roads were concerns members of the community brought to the attention of oil and gas companies on Monday.

More than 100 people jammed Ingamo Hall to listen to and comment on potential extraction infrastructure for gas beneath the Mackenzie Delta.

Representatives from Imperial Oil, Conoco Phillips and Shell Canada were on hand to consult interested community members on upcoming plans for Parsons Lake, Taglu and Niglintgak.

To mitigate the need for an increased network of winter roads, Shell has proposed the idea of a floating drilling and refinery facility at Niglintgak.

However, there were those in attendance who questioned whether or not the presence of a massive barge would damage the river bed and affect ice-flow in the spring.

For Elder Victor Allen, coming to the meeting was a way to find out what the oil and gas companies were up to.

"What is going to happen when the gas companies are finished here," he said. "The young generation needs something they can look forward to and of course we are concerned about the animals. You have to think about them too."

The gas giants seemed receptive to the idea of reducing gas operations at certain times of the year to accommodate geese migration in the delta.

Evan Birchard, Imperial Oil's environmental management lead, referred to the projects as "worldscale" and said one aspect of the community consultations was to gain local input so as to reduce the "footprint" the projects would leave on the environment.

"We are at an early development stage so one of the advantages of this is that by addressing concerns some may have we are able to modify our plans," he said. "This may mean that we won't always have the answers people want."