Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Case Study

The initial proposal in the 1970s for the construction of the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline was remarkable not only because of the scale of the project, but also the controversy that it generated within Canada. As a piece of infrastructure it would have been a landmark development in Canada 's resource extraction industry in the North, but ultimately never left the planning stage. The research, publications, and political discourse concerning it have found new relevance decades later, with a contemporary Mackenzie Gas Project having already recieved regulatory approval, but having yet to break ground (Krugel, 2015). The focus of this paper is an examination of the original project, including details of the planned path, rationale for construction,

To the Canadian government, as well as some of the residents of the land that the pipeline would have passed through, there was more at stake. Perhaps the best summary of the prevailing political view of the development of energy resources in Canada 's north was Prime Minister John Diefenbaker 's slogan “Roads to Resources”. The pipeline could be viewed as a result of this mentality, with the state providing both infrastructure and incentives to encourage private development, and the end goal being both increased economic productivity and a stronger Canadian presence in the north (Abele, 2011 ). Local residents who supported the construction of the pipeline believed that its construction would lead to long-term economic development in the area, with construction jobs and the existence of the infrastructure leading to growth in a part of Canada where many still lived off the land and had a very low measurable level of economic productivity. However, the Berger inquiry that eventually resulted in the project not proceeding projected relatively little economic benefit for residents of the area. Although an estimated 6,000 construction workers would be required to work on the pipeline, few would be drawn from the local population. The jobs that would be available to locals would

Although the delay has been well beyond a decade, Justice Berger 's suggested course of action may still be adopted. A new design for a 1,220 km gas line began in 2002, put forward by a consortium led by the Canadian company Imperial Oil, and including international firms Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, and ConocoPhillips (CBC News, 2010). Initial estimates of the cost projected a price tag of $7.5-billion, with more recent estimates adjusting that to $16.2-billion. A related example of the scale and uncertainty of the project is the number of permits required for construction: an estimate by Imperial Oil anticipated being required to file 1,000 permits. The actual number required was 6,911 (Unrau, 2009). Financing remains an issue, and a decrease in the price of natural gas has forced the participating companies to reconsider the timeline of the project, proposing yet another postponment (Krugel, 2015). The uncertainty of the project, combined with its political desirability, had led the federal government to propose a financial package that included Ottawa assuming some of the risk, and providing support for infrastructure related to the pipeline, in exchange for a share in the profits. Concerns about native rights in the region have been somewhat assuaged, with the creation of the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, which negotiated a stake in the project for some of the larger native organizations, in return for their co-operation. However not all native groups have