Canada offers C$500 million cash to help break pipeline impasse
Tue Jul 19, 2005 9:14 AM EDT
ca.today.reuters.com
By David Ljunggren
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's government says it has reached an agreement with five northern aboriginal bands to help solve social problems that are holding up development of a planned C$7 billion ($5.7 billion) Arctic gas pipeline.
In a statement released just before midnight (0400 GMT) on Monday, Ottawa said it was ready to provide C$500 million over the next 10 years to help the groups deal with the impact of the pipeline.
The bands' demands for more infrastructure such as hospitals and schools are just one of many problems dogging the Mackenzie project.
Imperial Oil Ltd. and its partners in the pipeline halted most work on the 1,350 km (840 mile) line in April, in part because of spiraling cash demands from native groups in exchange for access to their lands.
The government statement said the deal with the five bands was "an important step in the collective effort to move the Mackenzie Gas Project forward."
It added: "All participants at the meeting (to strike the deal) ... acknowledged that all parties involved in the project must continue to work in good faith in order to resolve outstanding issues."
Last week the Deh Cho First Nations, whose lands make up 40 percent of the proposed route, dropped two lawsuits against Ottawa when the government agreed to give them a larger role in the regulatory review of the project as well as millions of dollars for economic development programs.
Imperial has asked that public hearings into the pipeline be delayed by at least two months to allow more time to resolve problems with native groups and regulators.
The pipeline would ship up to 1.9 billion cubic feet of gas a day to Canadian and U.S. markets from the Mackenzie Delta on the Beaufort Sea coast.
Determining a fair price for access to aboriginal lands is a major challenge. Imperial said in late April that cash demands from northern communities were in the hundreds of millions of dollars, "many many-fold" higher than expected.
The pipeline consortium rejected calls for it to pay for hospitals and other infrastructure, saying that was the job of the local government in the Northwest Territories.
The territorial government -- which also signed Monday's deal -- said it did not have the money. The bands involved in Monday's agreement are the Gwich'in, Kahsho Got'ine, Inuvialuit, Tulita/Deline and Deh Cho.
Imperial's pipeline partners are Shell Canada, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and the native-owned Aboriginal Pipeline Group.
($1=$1.22 Canadian) |
