Surety could restore NWT glory
Devolution holds potential of returning territory to number one exploration spot: Ramsay
Walter Strong
Northern News Services
Published Monday, March 31, 2014
NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
David Ramsay, minster of Transportation and minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, returned recently from a mining conference hosted by the British government and the Finnish-British Chamber of Commerce.
An aerial view of the Diavik Diamond Mine, located 300 km northeast of Yellowknife. The mine is slated to reach the end of its productive mine life before 2024 - photo courtesy Diavik Diamond Mines Inc. |
As an invited speaker, the visit came at no cost to NWT taxpayers.
The Arctic Challenge: Mining in the High North was attended by more than 150 resource exploration, financing, legal and government delegates.
It was an opportunity to showcase resource potential in NWT, Ramsay said.
"Most people in the industry know there's opportunity here," Ramsay said. "An important thing to get across to folks was how things would be changing with devolution, and how the GNWT is going to be responsible for resource development on April 1."
On April 1, the GNWT will take control of a resource sector that has struggled to attract mineral resource exploration and development dollars, when compared to Nunavut and the Yukon.
According to Natural Resources Canada, between 2009 and 2013, spending on mineral exploration and appraisal in Nunavut totalled approximately $1.67 billion, $903 million in Yukon, and $418.3 million in NWT.
So far in 2014, exploration spending in Nunavut is double that in the NWT. Spending in the Yukon is also ahead of spending in the NWT.
Ramsay hopes devolution can help reverse that trend.
"What devolution will do is give surety to industry," he told News/North.
"It will allow our government to develop resources in a sustainable, co-ordinated way."
"When you talk about challenges facing investment in the NWT, the one thing that always comes up is the lack of infrastructure.
"The message I gave is that our government fully understands the challenges around infrastructure."
In addition to the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk highway currently underway with the help of federal funding, other projects under consideration include the construction of the Talston hydro-transmission line into the slave geological region.
"(That) would certainly increase mine life," Ramsay said.
"For exploration and advancement of projects, if you you had a hydro line - if you had power - it would mean a tremendous amount to companies looking to do anything out there.
"We're currently looking at an increase to our borrowing limit so we can make a sizable investment in growing our infrastructure in the NWT, which will encourage more investment and more in the area of resource development."
Oil and natural gas exploration are another significant potential for NWT.
"We've got tremendous promise and hope in the Sahtu with what's going on there," said Ramsay.
"We could be on top of a prolific shale oil play in the Canol formation. We've got the three anchor fields for the Mackenzie gas project in the Beaufort Delta."
Natural gas exploration is largely on hold in the NWT thanks to a slump in the LNG market.
The Sahtu Canol shale oil play and the developing Imperial Oil joint venture in the Beaufort Sea are both far from sure things involving sensitive regulatory applications.
Mining, and diamond mining in particular, remains the most significant contributor to the territory's GDP, but according to the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines, all four of NWT's producing mines are expected to expire within 15 years: Ekati in 2020, Diavik before 2024, Cantung in 2015 and Snap Lake before 2030, although Ekati and Cantung may see an extension to their operating lives.
Concrete prospects for replacing productive mines in the NWT are slow to come online.
"We need to ensure we've got the right climate here in the NWT so that junior companies can come here, do work and know who they're working with," Ramsay said.
"We've lost some ground. We used to be the first overall of the three territories when it came to investment in mineral exploration. We fell to third place.
"My goal is to get the NWT back to first place when it comes to investment for mineral exploration."
