About 10 years ago or so, I was told I'd probably have my mortgage paid off in the next few years. They were gonna be buildin' dem der pipeline in the MacKenzie Valley, and they wuz gonna need every last pipeliner they could find - about 6,000, give 'er take. It was gonna take a few years, and a lot of pay was a comin' our way.
Coming off the recent Alliance Pipeline project, which ran from Fort St. John, B.C. to Chicago, this was looking like a good line of work to be in. I had worked two major projects as an oiler (apprentice), and was fixin' to break out as an excavator operator on big-inch pipelines.
The union's pockets were flush, so they were spending lots of money on training. I took every course they offered, and by 2003 I was within 1,000 hours, a written and a practical exam away from a journeyman ticket as a pipeline equipment operator (excavator). They were going to be needing all the operators they could get, and I was determined to be on the leading edge of new operators, ready to cash in on the big prize.
Just last week, finally, the National Energy Board gave its approval for the MacKenzie Valley Pipeline to go ahead.
There aren't many national news stories that have a direct impact on my life, but this one sure did.
It was fortuitous, then, that I got a phone call in 2003 to work for the Battlefords News-Optimist, from a resume I had dropped off in 2000 at the end of the Alliance project. The pipeline work had all but dried up for me. Sure, there would be major projects several years later - Enbridge's Alberta Clipper for 2008-09 being the big one, but by that time, I had already moved on with life and established a family. There would be no frozen tundra in my future.
The planning for MacKenzie Valley started in 1978. I was three years old at the time. Star Wars came out the year before. The compact disc hadn't been invented yet. Carter was still president. Iran was a westernized state under the Shah that the United States sold fighter planes to.
Who would have thought back then that this pipeline, now pegged at over $16 billion to build, would have its economic case destroyed by recent developments in drilling and completions?
Why would anyone fight the Canadian Arctic to drill for gas, when there is now a glut of it on the market due to shale gas drilling, largely in areas close to high population density?
Natural gas producers and drillers are fleeing in droves to oil, because they can't make money in gas. And now, finally, we can build this pipeline?
The federal governments of Trudeau, Clark, Turner, Mulroney, Campbell, Chretien, Martin and Harper have all waited too bloody long on this project. If they had done it back in the '80s, the North would have seen the benefits Alaska had from its Prudhoe Bay development, but to a lesser extent. Alaska is one of the wealthiest states in the union, if not the wealthiest. Its citizens get annual royalty checks. And the Northwest Territories? Not so much. Diamonds have helped a great deal, but there are no diamonds in Inuvik.
Another generation or two have grown up with dire economic opportunities. One more will come and go before this pipeline makes sense again. Maybe if the land claims had been settled decades ago, and some people got their heads in the right place, they could have enjoyed some home-grown prosperity. Too late now. Too bad. So sad.
I guess we get to pay some more welfare for another 20 years. That will be grand. In 2028, we'll have written 50 years of social assistance checks, instead of giving people the chance at good-paying jobs.
Good show. Maybe by that time, I actually will have my mortgage paid off.
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net
