N.W.T. premier launches study to lay groundwork for oil pipeline to Arctic Ocean

OTTAWA - The premier of the Northwest Territories is launching a year-long feasibility study for an energy and transportation corridor along the Mackenzie Valley to the Arctic Ocean.

Bob McLeod, in Ottawa for meetings with his fellow premiers, says Canada needs to get its resources to market and it's time to look seriously at what he calls the northern option.

For almost two years, McLeod has been actively promoting the concept of an "Arctic Gateway" that could move Alberta oil and territorial mineral wealth to a port on the Arctic Ocean at Tuktoyaktuk.

He used a speech to a reception in Ottawa to announce a full feasibility study that will include a look at the economic, environmental and social impacts of the proposed corridor.

McLeod says the driving force behind developing the Mackenzie Valley corridor is not an oil pipeline to move Alberta bitumen.

But the Northwest Territories premier has been making exactly that case for the last couple of years, including telling a Washington audience last fall that "we have no choice but to go north" given opposition to proposed routes like the Northern Gateway line to B.C. and the Energy East pipeline to Atlantic Canada.

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