Yellowknife (May 20/05) - Political uncertainty in Ottawa and the absence of a key cabinet minister forced Premier Joe Handley to delay a pitch to the federal government for a $100 million pipeline benefits package.

"There's just too much going on; Ralph Goodale (finance minister) was travelling and we couldn't get it all together," Handley said Wednesday.

The premier had planned to be in Ottawa this week to provide details on a list of needs Mackenzie Valley communities outlined at a meeting with territorial leaders last week in Calgary.

The meeting followed Imperial Oil's warning that it was shutting down engineering work on the $7 billion Mackenzie gas project because communities were asking for hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits that were beyond the scope of the pipeline.

The Calgary meeting ended with an estimate of $100 million in socio-economic needs, but "more specific information was needed," Handley said. "We had to do more work, so we put it off. Our people will go down early next week and I will probably follow," Handley said.

The premier expects the final amount to be close to the original estimate. It will be used for training programs, community wellness, addictions treatment, parenting skills, counselling, housing and housing management.

Handley described the money as separate from devolution and resourced revenue sharing.

"It's not an advance on devolution or resource revenue sharing; this is solely to deal with impacts of the pipeline," he said.