Pipeline regulators need information to firm up process
Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (May 07/01) - The alphabet soup of regulatory agencies responsible for co-ordinating permitting and licensing approvals for an Arctic natural gas pipeline proposal are waiting for the next shoe to drop.
| Cheque is in the mail? The surge in non-renewable resource development activity in the North is not being accompanied by a surge in cash from Ottawa to handle the increased regulatory workload. As it did last year, the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board will be operating on a $1.1-million budget. It has yet to see any of the money. "We're told the cheque's in the mail," said board spokesperson Roland Semjanovs. The annual funding is proscribed by a five-year agreement, Semjanovs said. He added that a request will be made for more funding if a formal natural gas pipeline proposal is made. Semjanovs said funding has "always been a topic of ongoing discussion." |
Currently two pipeline proposals are in the works, one to ship Beaufort-Delta gas down the Mackenzie Valley and another to ship Alaskan gas either down the Mackenzie Valley via an offshore link to the North Slope or overland through Alaska and the Yukon.
"A lot of things are in a state of flux ... until we get something concrete on the table from the producers, a lot of things are hypothetical and speculative," said Roland Semjanovs, spokesperson for the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board. "At the same time we have to investigate all of the options, just to be prepared," Semjanovs added.
The regulatory group, co-chaired by the MVEIRB and the National Energy Board, has been working on developing a co-ordinated approach to assessing the impacts of pipeline proposals. Any pipeline carrying gas from the Arctic coast to southern markets would cross several regulatory jurisdictions.
Semjanovs said the focus is shifting from the requirements of the environmental assessment to the regulatory process, land-use permits and water licences.
"I'm sure the folks in the communities don't want to see 37 sets of people coming through talking about the same thing," said Bonnie Gray of the National Energy Board. Neither would the producers, who will calculate into their feasibility study the costs of the regulatory process.
The chairs of the regulatory agencies will meet in Yellowknife May 23 and 24. They last met in Inuvik in February.
At that meeting the regulatory agencies offered the producers group the option of submitting a preliminary project description. That would benefit the board by firming up its co-ordination effort and at the same time give project proponents an early indication of the regulatory path they would have to follow.
Those meetings, like all previous meetings, will be closed to the public. There is no indication when or if the public will be involved in co-ordination efforts.
But NEB spokesperson Ross Hicks said there will be at least three rounds of public meetings when and if a pipeline proposal is assessed.
The first, said Hicks, would be an information session to tell people what is being proposed. The panel that would oversee an environmental assessment would then seek public input on the proposals. Regulatory hearings are also required by law.
