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B.C. offshore on teeter-totter Government talk of removing exploration moratoriums enters quiet phase; Ottawa under pressure to create Pacific management areas Gary Park For Petroleum News
It was six months ago when an exploration consultant suggested the “silent majority” should speak out if ever British Columbia was to remove the barriers standing in the way of offshore oil and gas exploration.
Henry Lyatsky said those obstacles are mostly political and could only be overcome if a successful lobbying effort was aimed at the general public, not government or special interest groups.
But, regardless of an estimated 41.8 trillion cubic feet of gas and 9.8 billion barrels of oil in British Columbia’s four offshore sedimentary basins, the “silent majority” shows no signs of abandoning its silence.
Neither does the government, which has said little about its thoughts on offshore development beyond a passing reference in its 2007 B.C. Energy Plan, reaffirming its commitment to exploration and development and its long-standing request to the Canadian government to lift a federal moratorium, which would free the province to remove its own moratorium.
Otherwise the voices of support within government are faint and some are no longer participants.
Push for policies Meanwhile, a major push is under way to develop policies that would see the environment override and possibly forever “silence” any industry notion of exploiting the region.
It has been two years since former Energy Minister Richard Neufeld said he was encouraged by the initial response from the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to lifting the moratorium.
“No one is holding it up,” he said. “We just need to work together to lift it at the same time.”
But Neufeld also conceded the B.C. government had held only tentative meetings with the federal government without ever deciding how to move beyond the moratorium to allow stakeholders to gather more information and engage in more discussions.
It has been five years since the B.C. deputy minister responsible for offshore oil and gas, Jack Ebbels, said the federal government should treat British Columbia’s offshore in the same way as other similar jurisdictions.
“It’s difficult for us to accept that the Beaufort Sea is more or less pristine than the coast of British Columbia. Or that Cape Breton (in Nova Scotia) is more or less pristine and valuable than the coast of British Columbia.”
He noted that two scientific panels have concluded there is no reason to continue bans imposed in the early 1970s provided adequate safeguards were in place.
At the same time, Jose Villa-Arce, head of B.C.’s offshore oil and gas team and the province’s chief negotiator on offshore development, indicated Premier Gordon Campbell was close to lifting the provincial moratorium, opening the way for exploration to resume in 2010.
He said very few affected communities were “saying flat no. They want to be empowered to the point where they can at least be informed and we think that’s achievable and desirable.”
Those expressions aside, there’s no evidence of any backroom discussions, or even any interest on the part of governments or industry.
Environmental research But the environmental case against offshore exploration gathered momentum earlier in July when the Living Oceans Society said a research mission showed the Pacific Ocean floor off British Columbia is teeming with unusual life forms that the Canadian government must take urgent action to protect.
Society executive director Jennifer Lash said, “We found so much life, it is unbelievable.”
She piloted a one-person submersible off the north coast of Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands searching for deep-sea coral.
The environmental group has spent the last three years making a case for protection of corals and other species threatened by bottom-trawling and other fishing methods such as long-line fishing.
Lash said her society is worried that “protection won’t come in time,” especially given the resistance from the commercial fishing industry.
The federal government is currently in the planning phase of designating about 23,000 square miles of water from Campbell River, on Vancouver Island, to the Alaska border as the Pacific North Coast Integrated Management Area, along with developing strategies to protect corals and fragile glass-sponge reefs in an area from the Alaska border to the southern tip of Vancouver Island. That draft proposal should be available for consultation this fall.
The Pacific management area is the most ambitious and complex plan, involving governments, First Nations, industry and environmental groups.
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