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St. John’s, Newfoundland, April 2019: Drilling risers and vertical pipes used in offshore oil operations sit on a platform. Photo by Dolores M. Harvey/Shutterstock On May 31, Cenovus announced it will restart the West White Rose project in the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore. The premier and his energy minister immediately made themselves available to the media to state government support for the restart. The terms of the restart include a revised royalty structure with rates as low as 1.25 per cent when Brent crude is trading at between $65 and $75 a barrel. Premier Andrew Furey was quick to respond and was quoted as saying, “It’s incumbent, it’s responsible, it’s ethical for us to be picking the lower-carbon emitting products.” The Newfoundland and Labrador government has long argued its offshore produces lower-carbon oil than other jurisdictions. However, it is worth examining the environmental policies and approaches applied in the province’s offshore industry. Political scientist Angela Carter has documented the problems with environmental policies in the Canadian petro-provinces in her book Fossilized . Carter, a Newfoundlander, says the province’s industry was developed in a context of economic precarity and major environmental and financial concessions have been made to ensure the […]
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