|
Former Newfoundland leader points way for B.C. offshore Urges B.C., Canadian governments to deal with unresolved issue of resource ownership before involving private sector; Duke wants region opened up Gary Park PNA Canadian Correspondent
British Columbia is drawing on some wisdom accumulated two decades ago and 5,000 miles away as it grapples with the future of its offshore oil and gas riches.
Now living on Vancouver Island and heading up his own consulting firm, former Newfoundland Premier Brian Peckford is emerging as one of the strongest voices in support of opening up the offshore to drilling.
One of the driving forces in turning Newfoundland’s offshore into Canada’s second energy frontier, he dispensed some free advice to the British Columbia government during a two-day conference in mid-June organized by the Canadian Institute of Marine Engineering.
In particular, he urged British Columbia government officials to seek some common ground between the Canadian government and aboriginal leaders before even attempting to involve the private sector, especially the offshore leaseholders Petro-Canada, Shell Canada Ltd. and Chevron Canada Ltd.
In drawing attention to the need for aboriginal participation, Peckford identified one of the biggest obstacles to opening up the British Columbia offshore.
Jurisdiction still an issue To date, there has been no serious attempt by British Columbia and Canadian governments to settle once and for all the unresolved issue of who has jurisdiction over various offshore basins, notably the prized area southeast of the Queen Charlotte Islands.
A 1967 Supreme Court of Canada ruling decreed that the territorial seabed within 12 nautical miles of the shoreline (the limit recognized by the International Law of the Sea) was federally owned.
But in 1981 — about the same time Newfoundland started its own offshore fight with the federal government — British Columbia passed a cabinet order declaring the territorial sea to be an “inland marine zone” whose oil and gas reserves belonged to British Columbia.
Three years later, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a lower court ruling that the Georgia Strait, at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, where no oil or gas reserves are known to exist, belonged to British Columbia.
That left unresolved the challenge of extending British Columbia’s ownership claim northward to embrace Hecate Strait, which covers 80 miles and separates the Queen Charlottes from the mainland.
Hecate Strait claim unresolved Hecate is believed to be the province’s hydrocarbon treasure trove, with some scientists putting the value of oil and gas reserves at C$100 billion over 30 years.
Tentative steps were taken between 1986 and 1989 to reach a Pacific Accord between British Columbia and the Canadian government — matching the Canada-Newfoundland accord which Peckford was a key player in negotiating and which assigned benefits from resource extraction to both governments.
But those talks were shelved in 1990 when environmental concerns saw the British Columbia and federal governments impose the existing moratorium on exploration.
Now that the province, especially Energy Minister Richard Neufeld, is aggressively discussing the prospect of lifting the bans, the Haida First Nation has filed a writ in the B.C. Supreme Court claiming ownership of the area, seeking unprecedented control of both land and offshore resources within a 200-mile territorial limit. Duke Energy has spoken out Although the three Calgary-based leaseholders seem more interested in letting people such as Peckford and Neufeld carry the argument, Duke Energy Corp. (since its C$8.5 billion takeover of Vancouver-based Westcoast Energy Inc.) has entered the fray, making an argument for exploiting the offshore.
Robert Reid, president of Duke’s Canadian operations, said after speaking to the Vancouver Board of Trade last month that the region is an “enormously important opportunity” that should be pursued.
He said exploration can be conducted safely and without risking the environment as the industry has demonstrated in offshore Nova Scotia and the British North Sea.
Reid said Duke is attracted by the reserves in the Northwest Territories, Alberta and the Atlantic provinces, but “nowhere are we more excited that in British Columbia. There is an enormous resource base in northeastern B.C.”
Another in the area is Canadian Forest Oil Ltd., which inherited acreage through a takeover in the late 1990s.
Company president Jim Good said holding has interesting potential because of similarities with Cook Inlet.
“We view the acreage as having significant potential, but it’s long-term in our view and we don’t anticipate any actual operations on it for a number of years,” he told an investment symposium in mid-June.
| 