N.W.T. leaders join opposition to WWF stance on Beaufort exploration

Top leaders in the Northwest Territories added their voices Wednesday to growing opposition to the World Wildlife Fund's demand that Ottawa delay an upcoming auction of oil and gas exploration rights in the Beaufort Sea.

Premier Floyd Roland and Inuvialuit Regional Corp. president Nellie Cournoyea blasted the global conservation group for trying to make decisions for the North that could affect its economy.

The WWF is asking Prime Minister Stephen Harper to postpone the auction of oil and gas exploration leases in the Beaufort Sea, currently scheduled for June 2.

The group cited the U.S. government's decision earlier this month to list the polar bear as a threatened species, as well as concern about other species that live in the Beaufort Sea, including beluga and bowhead whales.

'It's showing total disrespect for the people who have continually tried to be good guardians of what the region represents.' —Nellie Cournoyea, Inuvialuit Regional Corp.

The exploration leases in question include areas already known to include habitat important to those species, the group says.

But Cournoyea, whose organization represents Inuvialuit in the western Arctic, said the WWF should mind its own business and redirect its lobbying efforts elsewhere.

"WWF and organizations like them should take their bags, go to China, go to the United States of America [and] clean up [those countries'] act," Cournoyea told CBC News in an interview Wednesday.

"Get rid of their big cars, their big condos and how much they're gulping up the resources of this world."

Cournoyea took aim at the WWF's proposal that the federal government work out a Beaufort Sea management plan before issuing any exploration licences. That management plan is currently in development and could be completed in a year, WWF officials say.

"To say that there isn't an effective management regime … it's showing total disrespect for the people who have continually tried to be good guardians of what the region represents," Cournoyea said, pointing to Inuvialuit's existing environmental management and protection plans.

'We just want it to be done properly'

Craig Stewart, the WWF's Ottawa director, told CBC News that his group is not against exploration, as long as a management plan is in place first.

"We are not opposed to oil and gas development," Stewart said in an interview. "Others may believe that we are, but we're going on the record with you right now to say we're not opposed to it. We just want it to be done properly."

Stewart said the federal government also has to be prepared in the event of an oil spill during exploration or production work in the sea.

"If there was an oil spill … the effects from that oil spill could be ruinous given that we have no technology to clean up oil spills in Arctic waters at this time," he said.

Roland pans northern decisions by southern groups

But in a release, Roland expressed his "increasing frustration with southern-based advocacy groups promoting decisions which impact the lives and economic future of northerners."

"This call by the World Wildlife Federation speaks to the issue of northern control over northern resources," Roland stated in the release.

"A southern-based group cannot be allowed to influence decisions concerning the future of our northern economy."

Oil and gas companies spent $613 million on oil and gas exploration in the territory last year, including a $585-million bid by Imperial Oil and ExxonMobil Canada to explore offshore in the Beaufort Sea.

On Tuesday, business owners in the Beaufort Delta said the region's economic health depends on oil and gas exploration, saying activist groups like the WWF shouldn't be "meddling in northern business."

Roland, the MLA for Inuvik Boot Lake, said the government supports "responsible and managed development" of the territory's resource sector, pointing to regulatory systems already in place at the federal and regional level.

Oil and gas exploration has been ongoing in the Beaufort Sea, but with global oil prices rising to record levels, more companies have expressed interest in tapping into the resource-rich sea.

The federal government has sold eight exploration leases in the last two years alone.