HOUSTON (May 5, 2015)- Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be here today, and to participate in this panel discussion on behalf of the Government of the Northwest Territories, in Canada’s Arctic.

My comments today are titled “Unlocking OUR potential”. They could as easily be titled “Unlocking YOUR potential”.

You may ask how a small Canadian territory can presume to talk about unlocking the potential of the international oil and gas industry.

That is the question that I would like to address for you today.

I’d like to tell you about our potential, about what we are doing to realise that potential, and about what investors can gain from that potential.

To do that, I must first tell you a little bit about the Northwest Territories – and how we are positioned – both physically and economically – in North America’s energy marketplace.

Canada’s Northwest Territories – we call it the NWT – sits at the very top of North America.  Our vast, rugged and sparsely populated landscape is about twice the size of Texas.  It lies east of Alaska and the Yukon, directly north of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. It stretches north from the 60th parallel all the way to the Arctic Ocean.

Threading through our territory, north to the Arctic Ocean, is the Mackenzie River.  It is the largest and longest river system in Canada. In North America, only the Mississippi is longer.  It runs over 1,000 miles before draining into the Beaufort Sea. Its delta is about the size ofTexas. The river’s path through the Mackenzie Valley offers a natural corridor between Alberta and the Arctic coast. It is a route once followed by the voyageur fur traders who first introduced commerce to our North.

Ladies and gentlemen, Canada’s Northwest Territories may be vast and isolated – but we are teeming with economic potential.  One of the most dramatic things that you need to understand about the NWT is that what we lack in population, we make up for in resources and energy reserves.

The Mackenzie River corridor that I have described to you travels through vast, isolated regions of forest and tundra laden with minerals and energy potential. The Canol Shale deposit, alone, holds an estimated two to three billion barrels of oil. Canada’s oldest and most productive oil field continues to ship our crude to market along this corridor.

Much of our region is located within the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin and the Arctic Sedimentary Basin. While under-explored, we estimate that our territory sits atop an estimated 80 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and seven billion barrels of oil.

It is believed that the Arctic contains one-fifth of the world’s untapped oil and gas reserves.  These resources are the foundation of the proposed Mackenzie Gas Project. That project is planned and permitted to follow our Mackenzie River corridor North to South – bringing 1.2 billion cubic feet per day of stranded energy resources to market.

Finally, there is the potential of our offshore – beneath the waters of the Beaufort Sea – where we are focusing more and more on our robust energy reserves.  Based on geological analysis by both the U.S. Geological Survey and our own advisors, the Arctic waters off the Northwest Territories have the oil potential to rival the Gulf of Mexico. The Amauligak field just off of our northern shore line is thought to contain up to 250 million barrels of oil.

You can connect the dots yourself.

The world is looking for a reliable supply of energy resources to meet a growing demand.  The Arctic offers one of the best new and stable sources of energy on the planet.

From our part of the world looking south, we are at the furthest northern reaches of the Pacific Northwest Economic Trade Region. We’re about as far away from North American energy markets as you can get.

But looking north, we offer a gateway to the Arctic Ocean. Our vision of a combined energy, communications and transportation corridor along the Mackenzie Valley to the Beaufort Sea can be made ready – if we keep working one step at a time.

Together with the Government of Canada, we are completing the next leg of the Mackenzie Valley Highway that will, in time, follow this entire route. It will link many of our small and isolated communities to each other – and our country from coast to coast to coast. Over 600 people are working around the clock building the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk Highway. When complete, it will increase opportunities for business development, reduce the cost of job-creating onshore oil and gas development, and strengthen Canada’s sovereignty in the North.

Meanwhile, we have begun the planning for the next leg of the highway, linking the resource-rich Sahtu region to the rest of Canada. This area is home to Canada’s oldest and most productive oil field. It continues to ship our crude to market along the corridor to northern Alberta from Norman Wells in the heart of the NWT. The new highway would provide year-round truck access to a region containing an estimated 2 to 3 billion barrels of oil, opening up new opportunities for exploration and development.

And work is underway to lay a fibre optic line along this path, linking satellite receivers at the top of the continent with data centres around the world and giving our small communities more tools to do business.  It will make us a leader in the remote satellite sensing field. High-tech and traditional businesses will look to us for the communications capacity they need in today’s connected world.

The combined energy, communications and transportation corridor will be a road to resources, opening up new exploration and development opportunities.  Once it is in place, it will form the backbone of energy development in our territory for decades.

Completing our corridor is in the global energy interest.  We are ready and willing to step forward as a full partner to make it happen – with creative and collaborative solutions that can benefit everybody.

We are investing in research through the Northwest Territories Geological Survey, evaluating resource potential, mapping bedrock and permafrost, and monitoring seismic activity. We are building the connections that will create our energy, communications and transportation corridor – the Mackenzie Valley Fibre Link will be over 1400 kilometres long when it is completed next year, and we are seeking the partnerships to complete the highway throughout the valley. And just last month we took the important step to introduce filing regulations for hydraulic fracturing operations. The new regulations will provide certainty for industry while meeting northern priorities related to surface and groundwater information, measures to address air quality, enhanced reporting, and public disclosure.

We must continue to prepare for future development opportunities, when oil and gas prices inevitably recover.  We need to be ready to make the most of development when it occurs. Our people, communities and businesses must be positioned to seize the opportunities that will come. We need to make the partnerships now for the major infrastructure investments that will support the development of our vast natural resources.

Thanks to our experience in diamonds, our people and businesses are already positioned to be competitive globally.   And our government is open for business.

We are ready to talk to socially and environmentally responsible companies that want to work and invest with us to develop our resources, build our economy, unlock our potential – and bring our resources to hungry markets around the world.

But as easy as it is to join these points in a speech – or on a map, the reality is that the cost of new infrastructure required to connect our resources to markets is about as enormous as our stranded potential.

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe the solution may lie in not only unlocking the potential of Canada’s Northwest Territories but that of Alberta and British Columbia.

Over the coming decades, production may decline in the United States. But, backed by the right technology, responsible northern production could sustain the North American supply. Now is the time to have these conversations. That is why I am here.

Global markets have shifted. Commodity prices have changed the discussion – in the short term.  This is the right time to create the conditions for investment.  Markets will rebound. We all know that.  Resource markets have ups and downs.  They always have, and they always will.  That is the way resource markets work – in cycles.

While we wait for the markets to rebound, we are building the partnerships to responsibly manage our resources, support scientific research, and protect our environment.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Northwest Territories is the key to opening western Canada to international oil and gas investors, explorers and producers.  We offer the next economic frontier and the foundation of sound economic expansion – investment attraction, job creation, and future prosperity.

Thank you.