INUVIK - Imperial Oil, leading proponent of the $16.2 billion Mackenzie Gas Project, has laid out the pipeline proponents' plans for the project assuming a positive decision from the National Energy Board, which will decide whether the long-delayed project should proceed.

Randy Ottenbreit, Imperial Oil's Mackenzie Gas Project development executive, speaks about the $16.2 billion pipeline last Tuesday at the 2010 Prospects North conference in Yellowknife. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo The next three years Year 2010-2011 restaff proponents' project teams select prime contractor and staff contractor's team advance field investigation programs Year 2011-2012 carry out field programs conduct preliminary engineering finalize right-of-way finalize and submit PPAs (project permit applications) Year 2012-2013 regulatory processing of PPAs conduct additional engineering update cost estimate END GOAL: owners decide whether to proceed with construction

At last week's Prospects North 2010 conference, Randy Ottenbreit, Imperial Oil's MGP development executive, said three years of work following the NEB's ruling will be required before proponents decide whether to proceed with construction of the 1,220 pipeline and its associated facilities.

Assuming the NEB gives the pipeline a greenlight; assuming the proponents accept the conditions attached to the board's decision; and assuming that talks with the federal government on fiscal matters progress smoothly, "then there's another three years of activity to get us to the point where the proponents of the project would make a decision whether to proceed with the project or not," said Ottenbreit.

According to the timeline, a decision to construct would be made in either 2012 or 2013. Imperial Oil previously stated during the NEB's final hearing on the pipeline in March that the earliest gas from the Mackenzie Valley will likely flow south is 2018.

"Three years sounds like a fair bit of time, and what takes up that time is that, in the first year, we would need to staff the project team because we have reassigned people who were working on this project to other projects because we found we were advancing the engineering ahead of where the regulatory process was," said Ottenbreit.

Pius Rolheiser, an Imperial Oil public affairs advisor, said the field work is crucial because it will help Imperial Oil acquire the data necessary for the thousands of permits needed to build and operate the project.

Other key initiatives during the lead-up to the decision to construct will include revising the cost estimate and finalizing the pipeline's right-of-way.

Imperial Oil is hoping the regulatory process comes to an end by the end of this year. In order for the National Energy Board to proceed with its final decision, the board must receive the final response of the federal government and the GNWT to the Joint Review Panel's report on the pipeline, which included hundreds of recommendations directed toward both governments.

After a recent disagreement on procedure between the JRP and the federal government on the process by which the JRP would respond to the governments' response to the panel's report, the JRP submitted its response to the feds on Oct. 4, confirmed Henry Lau, a spokesperson for Environment Canada.

With that response in hand, the feds will now finalize their final response to the JRP and send it to the NEB, which will require one month to review the response and issue its final decision on the pipeline.

"The expectation would be that probably in the month of November that the governments' response to the JRP report would be issued," said Ottenbreit.

"That would enable the NEB, probably in late November or early December, to issue its reasons for a decision."

The feds, however, are reluctant to comment specifically on when the final response will be in the NEB's hands.

"Federal and territorial governments will review the JRP's comments and submit the government's response to the NEB as soon as possible," said Lau.

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