Offshore off the table

Richard Neufeld, British Columbia’s energy minister earlier this decade, once put a value of C$100 billion on his province’s offshore oil and natural gas resources.

Gordon Campbell, who departs as British Columbia’s premier early in 2011, once set a goal of using offshore gas to light the flame at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver.

Both hopes have disappeared beneath the waves, despite years of scientific research, hearings and attempts by British Columbia to negotiate removal of a 1972 federal government moratorium on offshore exploration.

The new energy minister Steve Thomson said Dec. 8 that his government has scrapped any thoughts of continuing the fight to open up the offshore, transferring its priorities to developing and exporting gas from British Columbia’s northeastern shale and tight gas regions.

The raging battle over plans to step up tanker shipments of crude through the coastal waters has only intensified resistance to any offshore development, which has attracted only lukewarm response from the leaseholders, who have insisted they would show no interest until the moratorium was lifted.

A spokeswoman for the Living Oceans Society, among other environmental groups, welcomed Thomson’s stance, but called for an end to uncertainty over the status of the moratorium and the imposition of a permanent, formal ban.

—Gary Park