Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (July 13/01) - Officials developing a environmental assessment process for a pipeline are paying little more than lip service to public participation, says a Northern environmentalist.

A draft of the process obtained by the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee (CARC) and distributed to media recommends the public be given 60 to 90 days to comment on the proposed method of reviewing any Mackenzie Valley pipeline proposals submitted.

"By then all these individual boards will be ready to sign this thing," said CARC research director Kevin O'Reilly.

Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board spokesperson Roland Semjanovs said public input will be sought "once we have something substantive to put on the table, and that will be late summer or early fall."

In existence since last November, the working group developing the process has yet to hold a public meeting. The group is composed of seven regulators who would be involved in an environmental review of a Mackenzie Valley pipeline proposal.

The group is looking to develop a streamlined environmental assessment process.

Though it states in the draft it wants a "made in the North" process, the group has so far heard only from the corporate heads of the oil companies based in southern Canada and the United States.

An appendix to the draft notes the board chairs have met with both the Alaska and Mackenzie Delta Gas producers.

At a meeting Nov. 28, Mackenzie Valley producers -- Imperial Oil, Gulf Canada, Shell Canada and Mobil Canada -- presented their draft regulatory road map, according to an appendix to the draft.

"It was their consultants' view of how they thought the existing regulatory process operates," said Semjanovs. "It wasn't entirely accurate."

According to the draft, if a pipeline is approved the producers would develop gas fields at Taglu, Niglintgak and Parsons Lake. The gas would be piped in 12-, 16- and 30-inch lines to Inuvik for processing.

Gas would then be sent through a 30-inch pipeline down the Mackenzie Valley, through compressor stations at Norman Wells, Wrigley and Fort Simpson to Zama, Alta.

The anticipated production rate is 800 million cubic feet per day.

"Although the Mackenzie Delta gas producers have emphasized they are still conducting the feasibility study, the current development concept should not change substantially," concludes the draft.

O'Reilly said he fears the main priority of the board is to develop a process designed more for speedy approval of a pipeline proposal than a rigorous environmental assessment.

He offered to provide copies of the draft to anyone interested in looking at them.