Some 30 years after they were banished from the Canada's western Arctic, pipeline workers are back again. Shut down by intense aboriginal organizing during the 1970s, drillers, seismic crews and company officials are now returning to the polar mouth of North America's longest river – a seemingly endless expanse of river delta, Arctic tundra and boreal forest. At the very edge of this frontier lies some 60 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas reserves, with untold trillions hidden along the 1300 kilometer pipeline route. In one continuous ribbon of steel, gas wells at the edge of the Arctic Ocean will connect with consumers in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles as early as 2014.

The sheer scale of this project, all privately financed, underlines the importance of energy frontiers in the 21st century. The $16.2 billion pipeline is evidence of the new wealth and political leverage that is being mobilized to sustain the energy norms of the previous century, even if this means laying pipe across some of the world's most forsaken terrain. As climate change transforms this corner of Arctic, we are instead building massive hydrocarbon projects to feed power stations, petrochemical facilities and massive oil sands developments to the south.

These scenes were photographed at Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk, along the Mackenzie River and ice roads along the edge of the Arctic Ocean.They are informal snapshots taken in between reporting duties and quiet moments on the road. It is just one account of today's Arctic: political battles, environmental anxieties, and snowmobile races.

Original reporting is here.