Northwest Territories: $3 billion pipeline deal a go

SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS SERVICE

A $3 billion project to pipe Arctic gas to southern markets will move ahead after native groups signed a deal with oil producers and builders.

The project had been delayed as natives raised the $1 billion required for their share of the project.

The deal will give local native groups a stake in the pipeline which is part of a project to tap huge natural gas deposits in the Mackenzie Delta near the north coast of Alaska.

TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. will lend the Aboriginal Pipeline Group about $80 million for preliminary work on the 1,800 kilometer-long pipeline.

Producers spent $250 million last year on preliminary engineering and environmental studies, but work ground to a halt as the Aboriginal Pipeline Group looked for ways to raise the money needed for their share of the project.

Jim Antoine, the territorial government’s minister of renewable resources, called the deal “a big milestone in the evolution of oil and gas development in the North.”