Another year's wait for Mackenzie Valley pipeline report

The panel working on a much-anticipated report on the proposed Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline says it will release the report in December 2009, stretching out a wait that has already lasted more than a year.

The Joint Review Panel, which is examining the environmental and socio-economic impacts of the proposed $16.2-billion pipeline in the N.W.T., says its seven members are working with staff to complete the report in "an efficient yet comprehensive and responsible manner," according to a release sent Friday morning.

"The panel is not unaware of the fact that many people — industry in general — they want to see the results," Brian Chambers, who spoke on the panel's behalf as executive director of the Northern Gas Project Secretariat, told CBC News on Friday.

"The panel is very clear that they want to submit something that is very, very good," he added.

A consortium of companies, led by Imperial Oil, wants to build the 1,200-kilometre pipeline through the Northwest Territories to the Alberta border, where it would connect to existing pipelines that lead to southern markets.

Imperial Oil spokesman Pius Rolheiser told CBC News his company was not expecting the report until sometime next year, but it is disappointed with how long the report will take.

"I don't believe we were realistically anticipating that that would be the end of 2009," Rolheiser said.

Rolheiser said it's too early to say what the delay will mean to the proposed pipeline project.

Largest private construction project

Other members of the consortium include Shell Canada, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Canada Properties and the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, which represents aboriginal communities along the pipeline's proposed route.

If approved by regulators, the Mackenzie Valley pipeline would be the largest private construction project in Canada, according to the panel's release.

Friday's announcement comes in response to a letter last week by two organizations that helped create the Joint Review Panel, voicing concerns about how long it's taken the panel to complete its report.

In the letter, the chairmen of the Inuvialuit Game Council and the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board asked the panel to give them a specific date on when the report will be ready.

It has been more than one year since the panel held its last round of public hearings in November 2007. Prior to Friday's announcement, the panel had said it would complete its report sometime in 2009.

Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice, who is also the lead minister on the pipeline file, pointed out that the panel was appointed by the previous Liberal government.

"So in a sense, our government has inherited the arrangements that were in place," Prentice told CBC News. "We simply have to allow it to complete its work."

Then-environment minister Stéphane Dion created the Joint Review Panel as an independent review body in 2004, with the agreement of the Inuvaluit Game Council and the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board.

Since then, the panel has collected more than 5,000 written submissions and thousands of recommendations, and held 115 days of community and technical hearings ending on Nov. 29, 2007.

The panel was initially intended to report within 10 months of its creation, but the date was eventually delayed to October 2008, then most recently pushed back to 2009.

During the panel's deliberations the project's economics have deteriorated, with the latest official cost estimate at $16.2 billion. But analysts say the development likely would top $20 billion, while natural gas prices have eroded.

TransCanada Corp. also has a stake through an investment in the Aboriginal Pipeline Group. There has been talk of that company taking a bigger role as the partners grapple with swelling projected costs.