The only good Peel watershed is a developed Peel watershed.
So says multinational oil giant Chevron in its 2 ½-page submission on the region’s final recommended land use plan - a plan it’s pushing the Yukon government to punt and replace with a blueprint for industrial development.
That’s what would be best for the Yukon and for Yukoners, it says.
Chevron holds the Crest iron ore mineral leases in the Snake River valley. It also has oil/gas interests in the western Peel, near the Dempster Highway.
“We urge the acknowledgment of the potential economic benefits to be derived from development of these and other resources which will support the broader economic goals of Yukon,” says the submission signed by Chevron Canada's president, whose name and email have been blacked out by the government to protect his privacy.
“Chevron believes that the economic benefits of the region will only be realized if there is ready access to land with resource potential,” the Calgary-based company writes.
“Chevron believes an appropriate balance would be to increase the area in which the land use plan contemplates development and implement guidelines that are flexible enough to consider the merits of individual projects.”
A Peel plan must also have access corridors, says its comment which reads much like the one it sent in 2010.
“Due to transportation costs, virtually all resource developments in the Peel watershed are disadvantaged, relative to other regions. The region is remote and transportation costs are high. Excessive oversight or barriers in providing for feasible and economic access corridors to existing or new resources will have the same effect as not permitting development of those resources," it reiterates.
“Of greatest concern is the fact that the final recommended plan prevents ground access to the Crest deposit, thus preventing the economic development of this valuable resource for the benefit of Yukon residents.”
Its preference: a corridor across the Bonnet Plume River basin “for the Crest deposit infrastructure “ and another “from the Eagle Plains and Peel Plateau basins, permitting natural gas to a potential future pipeline corridor in the Mackenzie Valley.”
It gives no other details on the routing or whether it's thinking roads or railways. Nor does it say why it needs to cross the Bonnet Plume River, but not the Snake, even though the Crest project lies to the east of both rivers.
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But it does endorse the government's new plan – one of the few submissions from the resource extraction industry to do so.
“In our view, the use of the proposed land used (sic) designations, such as the Restricted Use Wilderness Area (RUWA) and the Wilderness River Corridor that would ultimately allow for such access would be a positive addition to the plan,” it concludes.
Chevron actually pitched a similar concept in 2010 when it urged the Yukon to "consider allowing access corridors across river corridor management or protection areas. These corridors provide general protection for a region, yet allow industry reasonable access for transportation.”
At that time it also sent along a few “guiding principles” to help the government develop a more industry-friendly plan that would:
- provide the greatest benefit to residents of Yukon by developing the land use plan within the context of a prosperity agenda that enables responsible economic development, ensures appropriate ecological protection and reflects the social and cultural values of Yukon residents;
- respects the right of existing lease holders, as reflected in existing contracts, lease agreements and other legal documents and;
- ensure the plan is consistent with differing jurisdictional initiatives (ie. Pathways to Prosperity, Yukon Ports Access Strategy, economic development objectives, Yukon Energy Strategy and various other plans and strategies).
The Yukon government seems to have heeded this advice, releasing a similar set of "guiding principles" in early 2012 to soften its rejection of the Peel commission's final recommended plan.
Under that plan, Chevron could work its Crest claims and also access its oil/gas interests.
Chevron renews interest in North
In the past few years, Chevron seems to have stepped up its northern focus.
It persuaded the Yukon government to renew its 525 Crest iron leases, set to expire in 2013-14, nearly two years early. Now they're good for another 21 years or until 2034-35. Each lease is about 160 acres in size. It paid just $321,000 to renew the whole lot.
Although it also has Crest leases on the N.W.T side of the border, it didn't ask Yellowknife to renew those early. Even if it had, officials say they wouldn't have accepted an application so far in advance of expiry. As of April 4, the company still hadn't asked to extend its hold on that ground.
On the Yukon side, last year the company started cleaning up the mess it left when it shut down its Crest exploration project nearly 50 years ago. The contaminated site included a massive fuel tank, dozens of fuel drums and other miscellaneous debris.
In documents filed with the Yukon's environmental assessors, Chevron said it plans to sell the Crest leases as soon as the clean-up is done.
Chevron shares its oil and gas interests near the Dempster with Northern Cross. That company, now 60 per cent owned by China's state-owned CNOOC, fired up a major exploration program on its Eagle Plain area permits in 2012. Work is still underway.
Several months ago, Chevron also bought into Apache Corporation's massive shale gas play in northern B.C., next to the Yukon border. Plans for that building a pipeline to Kitimat and an LNG facility. The Yukon government's been touting the Apache play of late, paving the way for the industry to extend its reach into the territory's southeast region.
Chevron also acquired exploration rights to a Beaufort Sea land parcel north of the Yukon’s coast. It promised to spend $103 million by 2015 on the deep water prospect.
Click here to read Chevron’s 2013 Peel submission.
Click nowhere to read Chevron's 2010 Peel submission. *The government recently removed the 2010 consultation feedback from the web. It contained all written and oral comments on the recommended plan.
Click here to read all other information prepared for, by and about the Peel land use plan since the planning commission was formed in 2004.
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