Media release: The Offshore Alliance is claiming MKI’s delay of its offshore seismic exploration project as a victory, following news that the company will take some time to “assess demand for seismic data from region.”
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.
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.”
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.
News release by the Offshore Alliance: “Instead of holding public hearings, which should be required before industry projects are given the go-ahead, the CNSOPB through its PR staff suggested on short notice a facilitated 45 minute “sharing circle” for all 8-12 invited “stakeholder groups.”
News release issued by the Offshore Alliance: “While there are some improvements in overall environmental assessment processes in Liberal legislation tabled today in Ottawa, the draft Bill is a step backwards with respect to offshore oil and gas in Atlantic Canada, appears to give oil and gas boards more authority, and points to federal concessions in response to lobbying from the provinces and oil industry.”
A coalition of environmental, indigenous and fishery organizations is worried that the Trudeau government will cave in to industry pressure and surrender federal powers of marine protection to the Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board and its Newfoundland and Labrador counterpart. Petroleum Boards so reflect industry culture that it’s like setting the fox to guard the hen house, they say.
News release issued by the Offshore Alliance: The federal government plans to break their promise to “make environmental assessments credible again” by weakening federal offshore oil and gas regulations for oceans off Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.