If N.W.T. Premier Stephen Kakfwi wants to go out on a high note as a leader of his people, quitting now isn’t the way to do it.

Just three days after he spoke in Calgary about how aboriginal communities in the North still need a deal with Ottawa to get a share of the energy revenue that will flow from the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, Kakfwi shocked everyone by announcing that he won’t seek re-election next month.

Earlier, at the Insight Information Company’s Far North Oil and Gas Forum, he spoke passionately about how some Northern communities can’t afford any nurses and not enough teachers, because the territory’s 43,000 people are still struggling to obtain a fair share of their own resource wealth.

Kakfwi is confidently predicting that other aboriginal leaders will finish the work he and his government began.

Premier Stephen Kakfwi

“I don’t think there are any deal breakers” to the $5-billion pipeline project, he said.

But after more than a year of negotiations, the territory doesn’t yet have its revenue-sharing agreement. Nor is the deal likely to materialize before next spring, not with federal negotiators caught in suspended animation between the drawn-out exit of Jean Chretien and the quick-draw entrance of Paul Martin.

Kakfwi deserves every credit for fighting for the interests of his land and the Dene people, long before he was first elected to the territorial legislature in 1987 and became premier in 2000.

But now is not the time for this 52-year-old warrior of the North to bow out. There’s still too much work to do, and he’s the man who can ensure that Ottawa, as he said in Calgary, “will do the right thing.”

FLAME OUT

A voluntary effort led by the multi-stakeholder Clean Air Strategic Alliance has reduced flaring of solution gas from oil- and gasfield facilities by about 62 per cent since 1996.

In 2002, operators of upstream oil and gas facilities flared and vented a total of 1.545 million cubic metres of gas, the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (EUB) says in its fourth annual report on the issue.

Industry cut its solution gas flaring and venting from small facilities that separate liquids and natural gas – which makes up most of the emissions – to 514,106 cubic metres, an 18-per-cent decrease from 2001.

Almost 95 per cent of solution gas in the province is now being conserved – collected and used rather than being burned or vented to the air.

Large oil and gas producers conserving at least 99.5 per cent of their gas in 2002 include NAL Resources Limited, Chevron Canada Limited, Pengrowth Corporation, Imperial Oil Resources and BP Canada Energy Company.

In comparison, Canadian Natural Resources Limited conserved just 71.8 per cent of its gas – flaring and venting more than 318,000 cubic metres last year.

That’s a lot of wasted gas that could be put to better use.

PARTY POOPERS

For a tempest in a teapot, this particular storm sure blew a sizable hole in Petro- Kazakhstan Inc.’s stock value.

Shares of the Calgary-based company, which produces about 150,000 barrels of oil a day in the Central Asian republic and owns one of the country’s biggest refineries, plunged 27 per cent on the TSX at one stage last week. News that PetroKazakhstan faced a potential fine from the Kazakhstan government for allegedly overpricing petroleum products in the country precipitated the drop.

PetroKazakhstan disputes the allegations. Its shares rebounded later in the week, after the company said the fine could be less than $400,000 US – barely a gnat in the firm’s big pot of profits, expected to be $300 million US this year.

The incident says a lot about today’s skittish investors, who are all too ready to abandon any tea party – even one whose stock has gained 70 per cent this year – at the first whisper of a cloud.

WELL DONE

The monster has been tamed.

Since 1982, a rogue oil well drilled on a bank of the Peace River has been flowing approximately 36,000 barrels a day of salt water into the river, and spewing one million cubic feet a day of flared, slightly sour natural gas.

The well originally blew out in 1916, when it was being drilled by long-defunct Peace River Oil Company. The drilling rig collapsed into the hole and the well continued to rage until 1955, when the province’s then-energy regulator drilled a relief well and plugged the flow – for a while.

The well roared to life again in 1982. A second relief well had to be abandoned when another drilling rig almost collapsed into the monster’s maw.

This summer, bolstered by $5 million for a well-control operation, the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, the industry-funded Orphan Well Association, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Small Explorers and Producers and Association of Canada, and provincial and federal authorities all ganged up on the beast.

Armed with a well-kill plan developed by California-based APA Engineering Inc., in consultation with GSM Well Control in Texas and Frontier Engineering in Colorado, they did battle all summer.

Last month, the original well and the two relief wells were all finally plugged and properly abandoned. Or does the monster merely sleep . . . ?

PRESSURE TACTIC

Four major gas producers are asking Alberta’s energy regulator for a delay in testing the pressure of gas wells that might affect extraction of bitumen reserves in the Athabasca region.

The tests are necessary to enable the EUB to make a final decision on whether the gas wells need to be permanently shut down, to prevent declining pressure in the reservoirs from hampering future bitumen extraction.

Paramount Energy Trust, EnCana Corp., Devon Canada Corp. and BP Canada Energy Co. want the EUB to extend its deadline for completing the tests from November 1, 2003, to March 1, 2004. They argue that the tests are cheaper and will have fewer environmental impacts if done during the winter.

The four companies make a strong case for the extension, especially since the EUB hasn’t offered any reservoir geological data to challenge more than 600 wells in the region that gas producers have successfully exempted from the board’s initial September 1, 2003, shut-down order until the tests are done.