The Canada – Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board has granted BP Canada an exploratory license to drill for oil in Atlantic Canada’s largest protected marine area. We speak with Jordy Thomson of the EAC to understand what the hell is going on here.
The Nova Scotia Offshore Alliance (NSOA) is reaffirming its call for a moratorium on all offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling until a full public inquiry can be completed on this dangerous activity. This statement comes in response to this week’s news that the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board (CNSOPB) has approved an extension to BP Canada’s license to drill offshore.
News release: News of BP Canada’s dry well offshore Nova Scotia is an opportunity for change, according to the Offshore Alliance, a coalition representing fishermen, environmental groups, and coastal communities. But that’s not the end of offshore drilling in Nova Scotia – BP has permission to drill six more wells, and Equinor (formerly StatOil) is planning seismic blasting in waters adjacent to George’s Bank.
News that BP is abandoning its oil exploration off the shore of Nova Scotia is a relief, but it’s way too early to celebrate. There are other companies eyeing our offshore, and harmful seismic testing may start as early as next spring.
Earlier this month anti-capitalist activist Chelsea Fougere, a member of the Campaign to Protect Offshore Nova Scotia, took part in a series of public panels on the risks of offshore drilling in Halifax and Mahone Bay. This is her powerful opening statement.
Cory Levander writes about Wednesday’s panel in Mahone Bay about offshore oil exploration. Not worth the risk, was the consensus, ““You can’t eat oil. You can’t eat drilling mud… But you can eat lobster.”
Ahead of a major conference on ‘Canada’s East Coast energy future’, new polling indicates slightly more Nova Scotians are likely to oppose than support BP drilling offshore Nova Scotia.
Feeling the pressure of increased public scrutiny, the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board (CNSOPB) met this afternoon with municipal councillors from western Nova Scotia, hoping to convince them that offshore oil exploration is safe. Don’t be fooled, says Marion Moore, of the Campaign to Protect Offshore Nova Scotia. “I would tell them that they’re being fed a big story from an organization that is completely captured by the oil industry,” Moore tells the Nova Scotia Advocate.
Giving BP, one of the world’s worst polluters, the go-ahead to resume drilling for oil along the Scotian Shelf, after it spilled 136,000 litres of synthetic drilling fluid, is the wrong decision. It ignores the event’s real lesson and takes us down the same reckless path.
“We are writing to you on behalf of the Offshore Alliance to urgently call on the Federal Government, in concert with the Government of Nova Scotia, to undertake a public inquiry into the environmental, socio-economic, and other impacts of offshore oil and gas exploration in Nova Scotia’s Offshore.”