Herschel Island (July 28/03) - The view around Herschel Island Qikiqtavuk Park will change the first week of August when a McCovey Steel Drilling Caisson (SDC) vessel parks there indefinitely.

"There is no immediate drilling work for it, but we may need it in the future," said Alan Boras, EnCana spokesperson based out of Calgary.

EnCana Corporation leases the vessel for drilling oil.

In late April and early May public information and consultation meetings were held in Inuvik, Aklavik and Tuktoyaktuk.

Boras said residents were mainly concerned about safety issues and the visual impact.

"Mostly they were looking for information and understanding," said Boras.

"On the parks side there will be a visual impact and people expressed their views on that."

The vessel is used to drill for oil in shallow waters. It uses ballast tanks to sink to the ocean floor to drill an oil well.

This won't be the first time the vessel has been stored off the island shore. It was moved there in 1989 and sat in Thetis Bay for two years before being moved to Alaska for more drill work, said Boras.

The bay is remote and sheltered enough to provide protection against winter storms. Everything will be turned off and secured with periodical inspections, said Boras.

"There were no problems when it was previously stored there," said Boras. "It just sat there without incident for those periods."

The vessel will be parked in the Inuvialuit settlement region.

"There is no problem with storing the vessel in that area," said Nellie Cournoyea chief executive officer for Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, adding EnCana would have had to take care of environmental concerns before the federal government would allow the rig to be stored there.

The vessel will be parked during the first week of August and will remain there indefinitely, although Boras estimates two to five years.

Thetis Bay is under federal jurisdiction and EnCana had to obtain authorization and licensing through the federal government, said Boras.

Herschel Island is located five kilometres off the Yukon coast in the Beaufort Sea. It is included in the Inuvialuit Final Agreement and was opened in 1987 as the first territorial park in the Yukon. It is open to visitors between mid-June and mid-September and is only accessible by boat or charter flights from Inuvik.

According to the Yukon Parks Branch, 90 per cent of the Herschel Island visitors arrive between July and mid-August. Last year 616 people toured the park.

EnCana Corporation is the largest independent oil and gas company in North America.

The personnel at the Yukon Parks Branch in Whitehorse declined to comment.