Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Nov 04/02) - With WesternGeco pulling out and a general slowdown in seismic exploration across the continent, the Mackenzie Delta is bracing for a slow winter season in the oil and gas sector.

But as a region that has been through a lot worse, businesses here say they're not panicking yet.

"I've been here since the '80s and I've seen the slowest stuff we're going to get," says Vince Brown, president of the Mackenzie Delta Hotel Group.

"If there's anything happening at all, it will be busier than what it was then."

Brown says staffing at the company's three hotels will remain stable, although he is expecting slightly less business than last year.

"There's still a fair amount of activity going on in town, even without the seismic."

At Stanton's, a wholesale food distributer, manager Rino Driscoll says he won't be hiring the two additional winter staff he had last year. But the summer staffing levels will remain the same.

Last winter, Stanton's was providing food shipments to 20 camp locations, but this year, Driscoll has heard there will probably only be about five or six.

"Still, it's not affecting us people wise," he says.

Arctic Oil and Gas Services, a camp catering and logistics company, says it's still too early to tell how the winter will go.

"We're only starting to get information from our client companies, so we're probably six or seven weeks away from knowing what our real work is going to be like this year," says president Mike Walsh.

"We're expecting a real reduction in the number of people we hire this year but we don't know how much it's going to be down. I'm expecting seismic activity to be 25 to 30 per cent of what it was last year."

Industry analyst Gord Currie, with the Vancouver-based brokerage Canaccord Capital, says several factors are contributing to the slowdown in exploration -- acquisitions by U.S. producers, low gas prices over the summer, and acquisitions by royalty trusts that aren't inclined to do expensive exploration work.

"It's just a case that there are more companies doing exploitation and fewer companies doing exploration," Currie says. But with gas prices recovering last month, Currie says some companies will still be out exploring this winter.

"In Southern Canada, it's getting harder and harder to find reserves, so as our demand increases, people are going to have to look more and more to the territories," Currie says.

"And if the gas pipeline goes ahead, it won't help you this month, but it certainly will help over the next five years."