TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Canada’s new Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr on Wednesday morning offered little insight into the Liberal government’s planned changes to the National Energy Board (NEB), or how a promised shake-up of the environmental review process for new projects would change the current project landscape.

Conducting his first conference call with media from Paris, France, at the end of the International Energy Agency’s Ministerial meeting, where representatives from 40 countries gathered to discuss energy issues, Carr sidestepped journalists’ questions about how the proposed changes would impact critical infrastructure projects, such as the proposed Energy East, Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan pipelines.

He confirmed that the government was opposed to the Northern Gateway project, but delayed making public any details regarding changes to the environmental review process in a bid to shore-up public confidence in the system.

The Liberals had promised to launch an immediate public review of Canada’s environmental-assessment processes. Based on this review, government would replace former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s changes to the environmental-assessment process with a new, comprehensive, timely and fair process that aims to restore robust oversight and thorough environmental assessments.

Carr underlined that diversification of markets accessible to Canadian energy producers were important, especially in light of the US's recent rejection of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline.

Carr reverted to the party’s election platform when asked about specific details of how the Liberal dispensation’s proposed reforms would affect projects.

When asked whether the Energy East pipeline would be subject to a grandfather clause in the new regulations, Carr said he would be reviewing the situation and provide results “as soon as we can”.

“The first thing I want to say is we understand the importance of moving our resources to market, all part of developing our energy resources in a sustainable way. We’re committed to a process that has the confidence of Canadians and we’re fully engaged in this issue with the government and I understand that any changes that we make to the process will have an effect on projects,” he said.

Similarly, when a Vancouver-based journalist asked about whether the Kinder Morgan pipeline application would be affected by the environmental review process, as the NEB’s deadline for a recommendation was six months out, Carr responded: “We’re working on it and we’ll be in a position to share the results as soon as we can.”