Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

INUVIK (Jun 19/98) - The drilling has been done. So have the studies and the tests. Now comes the marketing effort.

The $30 million Inuvik gas project kicked off its marketing campaign at a June 16 luncheon to encourage Inuvik residents to trade in oil heat for natural gas.

Natural gas will be available in Inuvik starting in June 1999, according to marketing director Patty Davies.

And he predicts savings on home heating bills will be as much as 15 to 20 per cent.

Further, Davies said natural gas is less burdensome on the environment than currently preferred oil.

"There are much lower emissions with respect to various pollutants (when people use natural gas, than those) created by fossil fuels," he said.

Communication tools will help market the joint- venture between the Inuvialuit Petroleum Corporation, which conceived the idea, and investors AltaGas Services and IPL Energy Inc.

That means dinosaur posters distributed to the schools to display how natural gas is created.

"We hopefully will get people in the town involved with it so there are no surprises and we work very closely with the people in the community," he said.

Meanwhile, project manager James McDougall said the project will mean several Inuvik jobs.

"We're committed to providing jobs to the Inuvialuit because it's an Inuvialuit-sponsored project, and secondly to Northerners before we issue any work to southerners," he said from Calgary.

Though the production facility will be built in Alberta, McDougall said Northerners will be hired to move the facility near Inuvik this winter.

"I can tell you roughly there are 60 jobs associated with the pipeline and probably an equal number of jobs associated with the production facility."

Construction of the pipeline will start late this fall.

"What's new is we're kicking off the marketing effort for the distribution system," McDougall said.

In the coming months, there will be different open houses and information sessions.

"You'll be able to say 'I want natural gas,' or 'No, I don't want natural gas,'" he said.

If Inuvik residents say they want natural gas, then next year with the distribution system fully installed, natural gas can be delivered from the end of the pipeline to houses and businesses.

"Then they'll be able to get hooked up and break their oil-burning boiler to a gas-burning boiler."

Next winter the consortium will install the production facilities required to cool and remove water from the gas so they can transport it in a buried pipeline from the Ikhil site to Inuvik.