Tune in TODAY for a webcast of the Arctic Imperative
Conference organized by Alaska
Dispatch Publisher Alice
Rogoff (Photo), featuring Arctic political and thought
leaders including: Iceland's President Ólafur Ragnar
GrÍmsson, Alaska Lieutenant Governor Mead
Treadwell, former governors Frank
Murkowski, and Bill Sheffield, U.S.
Senators Lisa Murkowski and Mark
Begich, and many other luminaries. (Also at Alyeska
Resort tonight following the conference at 8 p.m.: Please join in celebrating the life of William
C.
Noll (NGP Photo) Monday, June 20, 2011 at 8:00 p.m. at the
Alyeska Resort, Girdwood, Alaska. A formal church service will be
held on Friday, June 24, 2011 at 1:00 p.m. at Our Lady of Guadalupe
Parish, 3900 Wisconsin Street, Anchorage, Alaska Reception to
follow the church service at the Parish Hall.)
Investors Hub. At the two-day Inuvik Petroleum
Show in June 2011, former Canadian Prime 
Minister
Joe Clark keynote closing speaker, was extremely
positive about building the Mackenzie Valley Gas Pipeline. Joe
Clark said that various factors - including political ones - seem
to be lining up in the pipeline's favour. "You have an NEB
(National Energy
Board) report, you have a remarkable consensus here. You have a
majority government in Ottawa that is certainly not hostile to the
idea of the pipeline. I think what you have to do is take advantage
of this time," Clark said in the event's closing keynote speech.
Delegates to the Inuvik Petroleum Show heard from the Aboriginal
Pipeline Group and other companies behind the $16.2-billion
Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Arctic Gas Pipeline project, which won
approval from the (NEB) National Energy Board in December. The
NEB's approval for the project comes with 264 strict conditions to
ensure environmental protection and pipeline safety. Exxon Mobil
told delegates they have reviewed the conditions and feel that they
can meet all of them. The federal regulatory agency has given
proponents until the end of 2013 to decide if they want to build
the pipeline. But during a panel discussion at the northern trade
show, Aboriginal Pipeline Group president Bob Reid
(NGP Photo) said an announcement could come sooner. "I hope that
over the summer months, we'll be able to carry through and finalize
our negotiations with the federal government," Reid said, referring
to the proponents' bid to secure loan guarantees or other investments from Ottawa. "We hope to have
an announcement sometime during the summer to make this project a
reality," Reid added. (Nostalgia calls us to a memory of the 2002 conference.
-dh)
CBC News. Trade and economic development are on the agenda when premiers from Western Canada and the North meet in Yellowknife starting Monday, but perhaps a more pressing topic will be how best to deal with natural disasters in Canadians' own backyards. Premier Floyd Roland(NGP Photo) of the Northwest Territories, host of this year's three-day Western Premiers' Conference, said the premiers want to put more pressure on the federal government to get funding quickly to regions hit by disasters such as floods and forest fires.
Postmedia News by Karen Kleiss. Alberta Premier Ed Stelmachwants his counterparts from Canada's western provinces and territories to help him convince the federal government to support construction of roads and pipelines that will facilitate trade with booming Asian countries.
