The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry

Abstract

The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry may well be unique in Canadian experience, because for the first time we have sought to determine the impact of a large-scale frontier project before and not after the fact. A consortium of oil and gas companies, known as Arctic Gas, proposed to build a gas pipeline to bring natural gas from the Arctic Ocean to the midcontinent. The Government of Canada established the Inquiry to see what the social, economic and environmental consequences would be if the pipeline was built, and to recommend what terms and conditions should be imposed. We were told that the Arctic Gas pipeline project would be the greatest project, in terms of capital expenditure, ever undertaken by private enterprise anywhere. I described the Arctic Gas project in this way in my Report: "A gas pipeline will entail much more than a right of way. It will be a major construction project across our northern territories, across a land that is cold and dark in winter, a land largely inaccessible by rail or road, where it will be necessary to construct wharves, warehouses, storage sites, airstrips-a huge infrastructure--just to build the pipeline. There will have to be a network of hundreds of miles of roads built over the snow and ice. Take the Arctic Gas project: the capacity of the fleet of tags and barges on the Mackenzie River will have to be doubled. There will be 6,000 construction workers required North of 60 to build the pipeline, and 1,200 more to build the gas plants and gathering systems in the Mackenzie Delta. There will be 130 gravel mining operations. There will be 600 river and stream crossings. There will be innumerable aircraft, tractors, earth movers, trucks and trailers." The Government of Canada decided that the gas pipeline, though it is a vast project, should not be considered in isolation. The Government, in the Expanded Guidelines for Northern Pipelines (tabled in the House of Commons on June 28, 1972) made it clear that the Inquiry was to consider what the impact would be if the gas pipeline was built and was followed by an oil pipeline.