Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

NNSL (Nov 01/99) - Resource companies are back pitching natural gas pipelines in the NWT.

"We're trying to meet with people to pull together a consortium. We believe no one company can do this," Robert Reid, TransCanada PipeLines senior vice-president of northern development said Friday.

TransCanada is proposing a $3-billion natural gas pipeline from the Beaufort Delta through the Mackenzie Valley to Northern Alberta.

On Thursday, Reid made a presentation to the GNWT's economic strategy panel.

TransCanada, which pipes gas from Alberta to Quebec and on to New York, has capacity for more gas. The company is interested in the NWT's trillions of cubic feet of untapped gas reserves.

While Reid was outlining his proposal to the economic panel at the Explorer Hotel in Yellowknife, a Texan named Sam Judge was down the hall talking at the Dene leaders convention about Arctic Resources' proposal to pipe gas from Alaska's North Slope down the valley to the U.S.

Picking up additional gas from the NWT would make the pipeline more efficient.

The consortium is proposing aboriginal groups own the pipeline.

Former Mulroney cabinet minister Harvie Andre is connected with Arctic Resources. Andre was elected to the House of Commons for Calgary in 1972. He was named minister of supply and services in 1984.

"I listened to their presentation. Before the Gwich'in can make a decision, we have to do our evaluations," Gwich'in Tribal Council president Richard Nerysoo said Friday. Nerysoo, on the economic panel, heard both presentations.