Offshore bidding process

Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1999 18:11:32 -0300 (ADT)
From: Mark Butler <ar427@chebucto.ns.ca>
To: sust-mar@chebucto.ns.ca
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Hi
Any thoughts on this release  appreciated.
Mark Butler

						For Immediate Release
			      			11 August, 1999

Ecology Action Centre 
Resigns over Turbo-Charged Offshore Bidding Process

(Halifax, Nova Scotia) The Ecology Action Centre has reluctantly resigned
from the Environmental Coordinating Committee of the Canada-Nova Scotia
Offshore Petroleum Board in protest over the process used to issue
exploration licences to oil companies.  The Centre is calling on the
federal and Nova Scotian governments to halt the nomination of new areas
and issuance of exploration licences until the process is changed.

At present oil companies nominate, in confidence, offshore areas to the
Petroleum Board.  The Board then issues a call for bids for the offshore
areas nominated by the oil companies. The companies willing to spend the
most dollars on exploration work win the bids and are granted  exploration
licences.

Says Mark Butler, Marine Coordinator at EAC, "there is no warning as to
which parts of the ocean are going to be put up for bid and once they are
up for bid there is no formal opportunity for public input.  The coast off
Peggys Cove or the lobster grounds off Yarmouth could be nominated and
exploration licences issued without any formal public consultation."

Most of the licences the Board has issued have been for areas far from the
coast, but recently it granted two licences for areas along the coast of
Cape Breton. In both cases, local fishermen simply woke up one morning to
hear on the radio that oil companies were bidding on their fishing
grounds. In the case of the licence in the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence
fishermen have asked that the licence be revoked.
 
There is widespread agreement amongst environmental groups and the fishing
industry that two fundamental changes must be made to the bidding process:
1)ecologically sensitive areas, such as nursery and spawning grounds,
should be identified and excluded from the nomination process; and
2)the public, including marine scientists, the fishing industry, the
tourism industry, and environmentalists, should have a formal opportunity
to intervene in the nomination and bidding process.

...2
Norway, an oil producing nation, has taken a different approach to
offshore oil and gas development. Where Canadian legislatures have
declared all areas open to petroleum activity(subject to regulatory
processes) unless specially closed, Norway's Parliament 
has delared all areas closed until it chooses to open them to petroleum
development.  Canada should consider a similar approach.
 
The Ecology Action Centre has been a member of the Environmental
Coordinating Committee for more than a year and a half during which time
it has always found Board staff to be helpful and professional.  The Board
is aware that many organizations, including the EAC, are concerned about
the bidding process. 

The EAC felt it could not continue to sit as a member of the Committee
because of the serious flaws in the bidding process and the urgency with
which those flaws need to be addressed.  The Centre believes that the most
critical question in offshore petroleum development is whether or not an
area is going to be opened up to exploration.  Once an exploration licence
has been granted, and as long as commercial quantities of petroleum are
discovered, production will inevitably proceed with all its associated
impacts.

There is an urgent need to change the process now, not in two years, by
which time most of the geologically attractive areas will already be under
licence. Calls for bids and results of calls for bids are issued every six
months and the next round will occur in October. Charts issued by the
Petroleum Board increasingly look like they have been attacked by an
energetic four year old with a big pack of crayons.

In its letter to the Board the EAC also cited other reasons for its
resignation.
						-30-

The Gulf of Nova Scotia Bonafide Fishermens Association and the Ecology
Action Centre will be setting up a display in front of the downtown branch
of the Halifax Library today and tomorrow. Please drop by and look at the
charts of offshore Nova Scotia. For more information drop by or call EAC
at 429-2202.



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