Board recommends 60-day renewal as Imperial Oil's water licence approaches expiry

The Sahtu Land and Water Board is recommending a water licence for Imperial Oil's operation in Norman Wells, N.W.T., be renewed for 60 days.

It's one of two temporary licence renewals the board is looking into as a stop-gap measure, after the company's facility was referred to an environmental assessment and its application for a 10-year water licence renewal was put on hold. 

Imperial's current water licence is set to expire in early March, and the company has said allowing that to a lapse would be a big problem – forcing it to shut down and put infrastructure, the environment and the region's economy at risk. 

In January, the board agreed that Imperial's closure would amount to an emergency.

The 60-day licence, which now needs approval from Canada's minister of northern affairs, would allow Imperial Oil to operate lawfully until May 3. That gives the board time to go through the process of granting a longer, three-year temporary licence to Imperial Oil which would allow it to operate while the environmental assessment is carried out.

Northern Affairs Minister Gary Anandasangaree has 45 days – until March 24 – to sign off on the 60-day licence. That means there could be a regulatory gap, because the licence expires on March 4. 

Imperial Oil said at the end of January that shutting down the facility would take two to three weeks and in order to finish that by March 4, it would need to start that work by Friday, Feb. 14. That's why it's pushing for the renewal to be issued by the end of the week.

"Once initiated, the shut-in process does not contain a contingency to reverse and resume production if an approval is received after February 14," it said in its letter. 

Paul Dixon, the Sahtu Land and Water Board's executive director, told CBC News the minister's office is aware the 60-day licence will need to be signed quickly in order for Imperial to remain licensed. 

The fact that Imperial Oil's water licence and its operations licence from the Canada Energy Regulator were up for renewal is part of what allowed the Sahtu Secretariat Incorporated to trigger an environmental assessment of its Norman Wells facility in the first place. 

There's a separate environmental assessment underway for Imperial's plans to replace a damaged pipeline, called Line 490. The company has also said it would initiate a third environmental assessment – this one for its closure plans – by the end of March.