Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Apr 12/02) - Two major oil companies are poised to unite, creating one of the largest energy groups in the world.

Houston-based Conoco has applied to merge with Phillips Petroleum.

Last summer, Conoco bought Gulf Canada, who owned the rights to the 1.8 Tcf Trillion Cubic Feet) Parson's Lake gas discovery.

Brian Plesuk, Conoco Canada's community and aboriginal relations team leader, said as part of Gulf's team, he's watched the company grow to huge proportions, but says the new company will operate just like the old one.

"This summer there is a merger in the works between Conoco and Phillips, if that merger is successful, Conoco and Phillips will become the sixth-largest oil and gas producer in the world," Plesuk said. "We've gone from a relatively small company to one of the largest in the world."

"It's much the same as the Gulf way was -- we try to fit in, not take over," he said.

Conoco are 75 per cent owners of the Parson's Lake discovery and one of the four producers in the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline project.

Gulf drilled 17 wells in the 1970s at Parsons Lake and the field has seen a lot of new activity over the past winter.

Conoco's seismic crew is just winding up the three dimensional seismic at the discovery and opened the Weatherhaven camp in March.

Plesuk says pool of gas lies under the lake and the seismic will show the easiest route to get to the resource.

"It will define the reservoir, so that when we drill directionally, we will get the most bang for the buck," he said.

A three dimensional computer model will be generated from site to display the resource and the company can decide from that data how best to extract the gas.

The plan for the pipeline is, Conoco will develop Parson's Lake, Shell will develop Miglintgak and Imperial will develop Taglu.

Once the fields are developed, Imperial will build a gathering system which will pull all the gas into Inuvik.

From here a pipeline would be constructed by the five partners to take the gas down the valley to Edmonton.

Since all the energy companies are working to the same goal they decided that they would do a unified community consultation to inform people about what the company is doing and what they plan to do.

PetroCanada, Shell, Texaco, Chevron and Conoco have been doing the consultation as a group.

"It's basically the same business, so our thought was that we would go in and talk to people collectively

"They've asked us to come back collectively," he said.

"Communities seem appreciative of that, because it's not company after company coming to town," Plesuk said.