Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to start off by saying there is light beyond the Conflict of Interest Commission inquiry and workings. There are things going on in our communities. One of them I would like to speak about today is, on November 20th, the Honourable Stephen Kakfwi and his RWED staff accepted my invitation to travel with me to my constituency, particularly Fort Liard. I would like to thank the Minister of RWED for spending the time with myself and my constituents.
Mr. Speaker, I just want to report that in the Fort Liard area there is oil and gas activity going on. Chief Harry Deneron was our host and we flew with him to some of the camps in a helicopter in northern BC, which is still a traditional area of the Fort Liard Dene. We were told this winter there will be 11 drilling rigs that will be working in that area. Five of them in the Max Hamish area, which is south of the BC border, six of them north of 600 in the Fort Liard area itself. The band, Akaitcho Dene First Nations with their company, Beaver Enterprise has been working closely with the oil companies who acquire the work and the learning and the training expertise. As a result of that, Beaver Enterprise is working presently with Chevron Resources, Paramount Canadian Forest Oil Limited and Suncore. They have also made a big contract with the Alberta Energy Corporation to operate three base camps in the oil and gas fields. This will provide a number of camps. There will be a total of nine drilling camps as well as three main camps that will be working. They will be feeding between 700 to 800 people per day and they hope to have a projection of a gross revenue of $8 million to $10 million. This is quite a substantial amount for a community of Fort Liard.
They are going through a training process right now for people in the Fort Liard area first and the people in the region and the community and then the region. There are people in Fort Providence, Fort Simpson, Trout Lake, Jean Marie River that have been working and training in this area. With that, I would like to thank you for allowing me to make this presentation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
--Applause