EDMONTON - Now that Oilers owner Daryl Katz and Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel have cleared their throats, but not the air, on the downtown arena, the mind’s eye is haunted by the image of Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream, isn’t it?

For some Edmontonians, the current disconnect is the realization of the nightmare scenario they feared all along: the billionaire operator endlessly demanding concessions from a beleaguered City Hall and, by extension, the taxpayer.

If it’s not a $6-million annual operating subsidy, it’s agreeing to install city employees in an office tower, or it’s building in a financial cushion to soften the effects of the Canadian dollar possibly taking a tumble in 10 or 15 years.

What’s next, provision for the possible negative effects of global warming?

On and on and on. And this is coming just at the onset of an NHL lockout yet?

The reality is that after more than four years of this taffy pull, after Katz and the city have rattled their respective cages to focus each other’s attention, this is coming down to one thing and one thing only and that’s this: leverage.

For the two sides to conclude a deal over the next two or three weeks, or even months, this is going to be about leverage and how it’s used.

The deal-making process won’t be for those with tender stomachs or faint hearts. But a deal can and should be made. Enough is enough.

Time is a component of this, of course. That’s merely because it’s crucial to make a deal before rising construction costs increase the price tag beyond the $25 million all the dithering has so far cost the city, lifting the price tag to $475 million from $450 million.

More important, as time passes, another deadline approaches, the June 2014 expiration of the Oilers lease to play at Rexall Place.

On that score and its meaning, former Edmonton Investors Group member Bruce Saville was heard from on Friday in a radio interview, saying, in his typically blunt fashion: “If this arena doesn’t get built, the team is gone.”

Some citizens, and perhaps some city councillors, take comfort in the belief that, no matter how out there Katz’s demands may be, the NHL would not permit their cherished Oilers, who sell out their building game-in, game-out, to up and move to, say, Seattle or Quebec City or Markham. The very idea!

Don’t delude yourselves. In fact, the NHL has communicated to city council that, absent a lease, and with no state-of-the-art arena either being constructed or about to be, the Oilers would be a candidate for relocation.

That would require a majority vote of the NHL board of governors. But that gang, one of the most exclusive boys’ clubs extant, wouldn’t stop Katz from moving.

Still, moving the Oilers is not and never has been Katz’s end game in all this. He did not invest a reported $70 million in land acquisition and design costs so that he could uproot the Oilers.