Clara Descurninges, The Canadian Press
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MONTREAL — The federal government must reject the Bay du Nord oil project, off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, several activists and environmental groups pleaded Tuesday on this World Water Day.
“This project throws oil on the fire of the climate crisis”, argued the professor of political science at the Balsillie School of International Affairs Angela Carter, in a virtual press conference. The oil exploration specialist recalled Justin Trudeau’s promise to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, an increasingly uncertain goal.
“If the international community continues to expand oil and gas production, we are dooming our children to a life of extreme storms, erosion, flooding and shrinking northern communities, in a world where human suffering is increasingly important,” she said.
Canada postponed for a second time on March 4 its decision on this subject. The announcement is now scheduled for mid-April.
The Bay du Nord project, of the Norwegian multinational Equinor in collaboration with the Canadian company Husky Energy, plans to exploit a deep-water oil deposit, a first in the country. While Equinor initially thought it could extract 300 million barrels, that number has more than tripled in more recent estimates.
Furthermore, Equinor estimates that its production will “contribute to less than 0.1% of Canada’s oil and gas sector emissions, and less than 0.03% of the country’s total emissions”.
“Bay du Nord has the potential to produce the least carbon-emitting barrel of oil in Canada,” the company said by email. She cited the use of technologies to reduce the amount of gas flaring, the installation of heat recovery units and a certain amount of work carried out remotely, to reduce helicopter transport.
Its impact assessment report states that “the normal operations of the project are not expected to cause significant residual environmental effects” and that a spill is unlikely to occur.
Environmentalists dispute the conclusions of this study, deeming it biased.
The office of Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault did not immediately respond to requests from The Canadian Press for comment.
Risk of spillage
Besides the climate crisis, a possible oil spill could wreak havoc on the local ecosystem, said Greenpeace Canada’s Climate-Energy Campaigner Patrick Bonin.
“Remember that this is a deep mining project, more than 1000 meters deep. (…) In the event of an underwater spill, it would take 18 to 36 days to bring the equipment” used to plug the leak, he said.
Director of National Programs at the Sierra Club Canada Foundation, Gretchen Fitzgerald, pointed to the fact that Husky Energy “was involved, as recently as 2018, in the largest oil spill on Canada’s east coast.”
A broken pipe in the SeaRose platform, off Newfoundland and Labrador, spilled 250,000 liters of oil into the sea.
Economic uncertainty
Professor Carter also expressed doubts about the possible economic fallout. “Companies are still producing more oil while little revenue is flowing into government pockets,” she noted, adding that “in the 20 years before COVID-19, revenue from oil and gas have collapsed, they have fallen by about 70%, while oil production has doubled”.
With more and more countries seeking to limit their oil consumption, profits remain uncertain, according to Stand.earth’s international program director and Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Chair Tzeporah Berman.
The Bay du Nord platform should not be ready before 2028. But “by the time it starts, all projections, including those of the Canadian government and the International Energy Agency, say that demand will have dropped because that all the major economies on the planet have already given themselves a deadline to ban (the sale of) gasoline-powered cars”. Canada plans to do the same in 2035.
“There are so many studies that have shown that Canadian oil will be one of the first to be pushed aside,” she said, citing its high production costs.
Equinor responded that its project will create 16,000 jobs and “generate more than $10 billion in royalties and taxes for the province and for Canada.”
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This article was produced with the financial support of the Meta Fellowships and The Canadian Press for News.
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