Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to comment briefly today on the issue of resource development and, of course, the Mackenzie gas pipeline revised costs. Mr. Speaker, the land of the Northwest Territories and the resources in it and under it are our bank; the gold, the oil, the gas, the diamonds, the cobalt, the uranium, the lead, the zinc. Those are all resources that are in huge demand. The world population is six billion, slated to go to nine billion and beyond in the next 10 years or so. There is an insatiable and increasing demand for resources worldwide. We sit on that storehouse. The land is our bank.
Mr. Broiles, whose parent company Exxon reported $39.5 billion profits last year, the most in any corporation in the history of the world, has indicated that the project, the Mackenzie gas project, is not in a position to report double digit returns on their investment, therefore making it questionable. UBS Securities has indicated that, in their estimation, you need $7.75 per thousand cubic feet of gas to make this project viable to proceed without government support. The price of gas on Monday was $6.90 cents a thousand cubic feet. So I would suggest, with all the room there is for slippage and movement and fudging, that there's probably plenty of room to move on the viability of this particular pipeline.
We should also keep in mind, Mr. Speaker, that this project does not exist in isolation; that it's part of a larger global canvas of work that's being done and there are all sorts of guessing and supposition of what other pipeline motives and agendas are out there. One of the ones I've read about was that the figures have been inflated, because the pipeline is getting ready for some tough negotiations on fiscal certainty and arrangements with the federal government, that the pipeline is dead and they're just trying to come up with a face-saving way to walk away from $600 billion. Or that in fact this project is going to be partnered up somehow with the Alaska pipeline, which is now estimated at costing 40 to 50 billion dollars, to have some kind of joint project that will allow both those fields to be accessed through the Mackenzie pipeline, one would assume over the top.
So, Mr. Speaker, very clearly there are forces at play and there's been significant shift in the ground. Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.