Newfoundland and Labrador Political Pot Pourri

robbie_dee wrote:

If the party really intends to wait a year or more before selecting a permanent leader, that would allow for the possibility that Ms. Coffin succeeds in her court challenge and precipitates a potentially winnable byelection and a seat for prospective new permanent leader, whoever that person may be.

I just can't see that happening. I like her and thought she should still be the leader. However, if 56.6% of party members voted against her, how could see she and the party look to win the public's support if she was chosen again after an internal vote that is one of the lowest, if not the lowest in Canadian history, for her? If the members wanted her why didn't they just suspend the review until the court decision was over? I am sorry to see her go, but I don't see any way back to the leadership, although it might be possible for her to win a seat through a court decision or in a future election, although that would still be somewhat difficult under the circumstances.

Experts are warning that Atlantic Canada, including Newfoundland, like BC, needs to prepare its roads for the deluge-type storms that will repeatedly hit them in the future due to global warming.

Atlantic Canadians living along highways severed by this week’s torrential rain say it’s past time for governments to focus on retrofitting roads to ensure they can survive deluges that are predicted to become more frequent.

“This was a wake-up call, and we’re probably going to need a few wake-up calls before we start getting ready for it,” Peter MacGillivray said on Wednesday after two culverts on Highway 245 near his home in northern Nova Scotia were taken out by the latest storm.

The 59-year-old said he’s using his four-wheeler and a forest road to get from his home to an undamaged portion of the highway after the culverts were unable to withstand about 116 mm of rain over two days.

In southwestern Newfoundland, which was battered by the same storm, Joe Murphy said the winding rural roads along the coast were already in poor condition, and locals have been saying for years that upgrades were needed.

“If we’re going to have monstrous storms and we have poor infrastructure, obviously it’s going to cause significantly more damage,” the resident of Codroy, N.L., said in an interview Thursday. ...
A federal climate change report released in April 2019 said the consensus of Canadian researchers is that the number of extreme rainfall events, lasting over several days, is expected to rise on the East Coast. The report said if current global carbon emissions continue, Atlantic Canada will experience a 12 per cent increase in annual precipitation over the next century, and a 30 per cent increase in one-in-10-year storms that produce large downpours of rain.

Slobodan Simonovic, director of engineering studies for the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, said a fundamental rethink is needed on how to design roads to adapt to these forecasts. “Everything that is happening in Canada, we are repeating the same mistakes, and I’m puzzled that message isn’t reaching anyone,” said Simonovic, an engineering professor emeritus at Western University in London, Ont.

Instead of relying on standards that use historic information to size culverts or specify the roadbed materials, he said civil engineers should be doing “performance-based” calculations of how a given section of roadway can survive storms. “We need to simulate a given structure under various conditions … and I’m usually recommending we then choose an option that can maximize the resilience of the structure,” he said.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-recent-storm-exposes-need...

Earlier in posts 21, 26 and 31, I described how Liberals PM Trudeau and Premier Furey have pushed development of offshore oil in Newfoundland that with the latest information available would lead to an eight fold expansion in the provinces greenhouse emissions compared to 1990 emissions with the new "industry proposal called Bay du Nord being added to existing provincial oil production". So much for reducing Newfoundland and Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. I have summarized the info for the three previous posts below and provided info on the latest Bay du Nord project from a National Observer article. Not by accident has this barely raised a ripple in the mainstream media.

While Canadians have been focused on COVID-19, the Trudeau Liberal government has been accelerating the process of developing Newfoundlands offshore oil by carrying out a public consultation to eliminate the required environmental assessments for Newfounland offshore drilling. This involved rougly 100 drilling holes according to the following article from Le Devoir. 

In October 2020, energy company Equinor said it had discovered oil in two locations east of St. John’s following an exploration drilling campaign. One of Canada’s marine refuges, the Northeast Newfoundland Slope is also east of St. John’s. The 55,000-square-kilometre section of the ocean is important for biodiversity.

Newfoundland Furey Liberals, with the assistance of the Trudeau Liberals, has poured ever more resources into its oil industry, even as the industry is abandoning the province. The Trudeau Liberals gave $325 million in subsidies to Furey last fall to keep the oil industry afloat and then added another $41.5 million giveaway for half the cost of building an oil refinery that Husky Oil was about to close.

 

The International Energy Agency has clearly stated that no new sources of fossil fuels can be developed if humanity wants to keep the climate crisis within the guardrails set in the global Paris Agreement. The oil industry in Canada, however, shows no sign it plans to do what's needed voluntarily.

The latest example is an industry proposal called Bay du Nord. It calls for developing a huge new complex of oilfields offshore of Newfoundland and Labrador. The industry plans to extract 200,000 barrels a day from this new complex. That much oil will add 30 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) to our atmosphere every year when it is burned.

Back 1990 when Prime Minister Brian Mulroney first promised that Canada would reduce our climate pollution, Newfoundland and Labrador emitted 10 MtCO2. ... Five times more CO2 is now flowing through Newfoundland and Labrador's economy than in 1990. And now the province and the oil industry are planning to toss another 30 MtCO2 a year on top if their push for the new Bay du Nord complex is approved.

There appear to be no functional brakes on our nation's runaway fossil-carbon juggernaut. Oil exports in Canada are record high and rising fast. We export six times more oil than we did in 1990. And the climate damage we are exporting in our oil has surged along with it — rising by half a billion tonnes of CO2 a year along the way.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/02/23/analysis/climate-snapshot-ba...

Newfoundland Liberal Premier Andrew Furey is pushing hard for going ahead with the new Bay du Nord oilfield which is 500 km east of St. John's, making it what would the first  deepwater oilfield in Canada with all the additional risks that go with deepwater drilling. Meanwhile Liberal Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault "delayed a decision on the offshore oil project for another 40 days, saying he needed more time to decide whether the project is likely to cause "significant adverse environmental effects." " If you can't tell whether an oilfield will have significant adverse effects, it's time to resign as Environment Minister.
On the other hand provincial NDP interim leader Jim Dinn said "he wants Furey to show a commitment to transitioning away from oil. "Somewhere along the line we've just got to … stop talking about the next project that's out there, and start focusing on people in our province and making sure that they have a future here that's sustainable," he said. "I think they're so focused on the next oil project and basically being the mouthpiece for the oil companies, that I think in many ways what my biggest fear is, is that we're going to find that the future for workers is going to be bleak."

In a classic meaningless move, "the Newfoundland and Labrador Oil and Gas Industries Association rebranded itself as Energy N.L" while pushing for the opening of the Bay du Nord oilfield while the Sierra Club spoke out against opening the oilfield on the same day. 

Premier Andrew Furey
Premier Andrew Furey wouldn't do an interview, but in an email statement reiterated his government's support of the project.  ... 
 
Located in the Flemish Pass, about 500 kilometres east of St. John's, the site could hold 300 million barrels of oil and an estimated $3.5 billion in federal revenues, according to the website of Equinor, one of the project's key stakeholders.

Quote:

Earlier this month, Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault delayed a decision on the offshore oil project for another 40 days, saying he needed more time to decide whether the project is likely to cause "significant adverse environmental effects."

This all came the same day the Newfoundland and Labrador Oil and Gas Industries Association rebranded itself as Energy N.L., saying they're broadening their focus beyond the oil industry.

It was also the same day the Sierra Club spoke out against the project, calling it contradictory to Newfoundland and Labrador's climate goals. 

Meanwhile, interim N.L. NDP Leader Jim Dinn said he wants Furey to show a commitment to transitioning away from oil. 

"Somewhere along the line we've just got to … stop talking about the next project that's out there, and start focusing on people in our province and making sure that they have a future here that's sustainable," he said.

"I think they're so focused on the next oil project and basically being the mouthpiece for the oil companies, that I think in many ways what my biggest fear is, is that we're going to find that the future for workers is going to be bleak."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/federal-liberal-ndp...

Newfoundland Liberal Premier Andrew Furey got his wish with the Trudeau Liberal government approval of the Bay du Nord oilfield despite 118 environmental, civic and indigenous groups protesting against.  Because of our failure globally to deal with climate change effectively, it now projects we have only three years, until 2025, to keep the carbon driven temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius or less. The report concludes "that harmful carbon emissions from 2010-2019 have never been higher in human history, is proof that the world is on a “fast track” to disaster. Starting this project was approved two days after the IPCC report and despite UN Secretary General Guitierres warning that starting new fossil fuel projects would be "moral and economic madness.". The last post describes many of the problems with this project.

An illustration of the Bay du Nord proposal off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. Photo courtesy of Equinor

Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault formally approved the Bay du Nord offshore oil megaproject Wednesday, making a decision that will infuriate environmentalists but boost the Newfoundland and Labrador economy. ...

The Newfoundland and Labrador government has fiercely championed the project, with Premier Andrew Furey lobbying fellow Liberals for months. 

At a St. John's news conference Wednesday evening, Furey called the approval a "giant step forward" for the project, and a key part of an economic recovery for the government, which is facing sky-high debt. ...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a new report last week warning that the Paris Climate agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels is all but out of reach. On Monday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure would be "moral and economic madness."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/bay-du-nord-approva...

The Narwhal further describes many of the problems associated with the Trudeau Liberal approval of the Bay du Nord oilfield project that aims at extracting up to one billion barrels of oil over 30 years. It describes a lack of information on many environmental impacts, including ignoring indigenous concerns, misrepresenting or ignoring greenhouse emissions, fishery and environmental scientists concerns and the impact on fisheries and wildlife. 

One of Equinor’s Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading vessels, like the one proposed for use on the Bay du Nord project, for drilling into oil reserves below the seafloor. Photo: Equinor

The Bay du Nord project proposes to extract up to one billion barrels of crude oil from the seabed about 500 kilometres northeast of St. John’s. There, in depths ranging from 300 metres to 1,200 metres, owners Equinor, of Norway, and Husky Energy (now owned by Cenovus), of Canada, hope to operate for up to 30 years. ...

Several environmental and Indigenous groups wanted the project rejected. In mid-March, Amy Norman of Labrador Land Protectors told a media briefing hosted by Sierra Club, that approving Bay du Nord would put the country on the wrong trajectory. “The world is changing and climate change is already here … Already we’re seeing impacts here in Labrador and in Newfoundland: unreliable sea ice, warming temperatures, more frequent storms, unpredictable weather,” Norman said. “It’s already impacting our ways of life and it’s already changing how we live on these lands.” ...

Prior to its approval, Gretchen Fitzgerald, national programs director with Sierra Club Canada, noted that there are a number of red flags she sees with the project. For example, she said that the production estimates have grown from 300,000 barrels to one billion since the project was first pitched and that there are also questions about whether the government’s decision is based on sound scientific advice.

The deep-sea drilling project falls east of Newfoundland and Labrador where four offshore oil and gas projects currently operate. Bay du Nord has been the subject of controversy, as has a 2020 regional assessment on offshore exploration drilling in the area: that led to the exclusion of exploration projects — during which companies drill wells to determine the feasibility and value of long-term projects — in the area from requiring the sort of seal of approval Bay du Nord is waiting on from Guilbeault. ...

Both the regional assessment and Bay du Nord have been mired in concerns around whether science — specifically scientific evidence from Fisheries and Oceans Canada — is being outflanked by the province’s push for oil and gas.

In late January, CBC reported on a leaked letter from the union representing Fisheries and Oceans scientists in Newfoundland and Labrador, which outlined its members’ concerns about how politicians and oil and gas industry lobbyists were allegedly interfering with the advice from scientists and scientific practices at the department. It noted several instances of interference, including in a report on mitigating the impacts of oil and gas exploration on corals and sponges. 

Also in January, a critical report from Fisheries and Oceans Canada was released publicly a full two years after it was written. The report is a review of Equinor’s draft environmental impact statement for Bay du Nord, and states that Fisheries Department scientists found several cases where information was mischaracterized and relevant research was left out. Baseline information, it said, was incomplete and outdated for nearly all chapters reviewed. 

It continued that this led to an unreliable assessment and “inappropriate conclusions. In its current form, and until the problems identified in this report are addressed, the [environmental impact statement] is not considered a reliable source of information for decision-making processes,” the report stated. ...

The agency also said that the final statement was informed by input from Indigenous groups and the public. But notes from a meeting between the agency and various Indigenous groups in August 2020, after the final statement was submitted, includes a participant question on why Indigenous groups were consulted after Equinor had already received significant input from the government. The questioner stated that this made the assessment process for Bay du Nord different from other similar projects. “This was a missed opportunity especially given the agency’s commitment to early engagement of Indigenous groups,” the question reads. ...

The environmental organization Stand.Earth commissioned environmental lawyer Shelley Kath to dig into the Fisheries and Oceans report, comparing the recommendations in it to Equinor’s final environmental impact statement. In the vast majority of cases, she found that concerns raised by scientists were not addressed.

An obvious one, she points out, is that the largest oil spill in Newfoundland and Labrador’s history wasn’t mentioned in a discussion of historical spills: a 250,000-litre spill in 2018 from the SeaRose Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading vessel. That’s the same type of vessel proposed for use on Bay du Nord, and it was operated by Husky Energy (now Cenovus) — Equinor’s partner on the Bay du Nord project. Despite this omission being raised by Fisheries scientists, the SeaRose spill is not mentioned in Equinor’s final statement. ...

“If we’re not even learning from massive mistakes like that, and information of what those impacts were at the time is not incorporated going forward, what does that say?” Fitzgerald, of Sierra Club, said. “It’s actually actively ignored, what does that say?”

The final statement also failed to address a concern brought forward by Fisheries scientists on the lack of modeling around the release of hydrocarbon gas, such as methane, in the case of a spill.  ...

Fisheries scientists responded that it had received several reports of vessels striking whales in transit to or from offshore facilities, as well as reports of a number of dead whales sighted with no evidence of fishing net entanglement, suggesting that being struck was likely also their cause of death. Kath found that Equinor’s statement on vessel strikes in the final mostly reads the same, word for word as what Fisheries objected to — up until the end, when it’s amended from the risk being “considered low” to say “the potential for ship strikes is considered very low and not considered an effect.” ... Kath found that Equinor’s statement on vessel strikes in the final mostly reads the same, word for word as what Fisheries objected to — up until the end, when it’s amended from the risk being “considered low” to say “the potential for ship strikes is considered very low and not considered an effect.” ...

A common thread throughout the agency’s report is that, while concerns were raised by various groups, there is limited information available. A lack of baseline information was brought up both by Fisheries and Oceans scientists and Indigenous groups that participated in the project review. ...

Susanna Fuller, vice-president of operations and projects for marine conservation organization Oceans North told The Narwhal that a 2016 literature review examining impacts of oil and gas operations on marine environments didn’t even mention the offshore industry in Newfoundland and Labrador or Nova Scotia, simply because there is virtually no peer-reviewed literature available. “There are two papers that were done a long time ago by a scientist who now works at (the provincial offshore petroleum board), but there is no ongoing look at actual impacts,” Fuller said. ...

Economic stability and environmental sustainability can exist in tandem, Fuller said, through following good scientific advice rather than prioritizing industry. It’s a lesson she said should have been learned, considering that Newfoundland’s cod industry collapsed as a result of overfishing. “I keep thinking it’s just the colony of unrequited dreams,” she said. “You see these things happen again every few decades in Newfoundland, where there’s so much fear of losing economic benefit, that they lose the full economic benefits: mining went that way, cod went that way.”

https://thenarwhal.ca/bay-du-nord-newfoundland-approved/

Today Trudeau  and Newfounlan Liberal Premier Furey approved the go-ahead of the Newfoundland $3.2 billion West White Rose oilfield extension project, heavily subsidized of course by taxpayers. Cenovus, the developing oil company, boasted that the oilfield development would go ahead because it has been "de-risked" by the government, which only gets a 1% royalty until profitability and afterward only rise with high oil prices, instead of the 6.5% royalty of the previous deal that fell apart with the drop in oil prices due to Covid. Of course, the oil company is in great position with oil prices hitting record highs now. 

This comes after already shown that the Liberals 2030 climate change plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45% was electoral bullshit in April, six months after the election, by approving the opening of the new Bay du Nord oilfield off Newfoundland (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/bay-du-nord-approva...) and made the Canadian fossil fuel industry the most heavily subsidized per capita in the G20 (https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/canada-leads-g20-in-finan...), Trudeau secretly approved a $10 billion loan guarantee of the Trans Mountain project whose estimated cost has soared to $21.4 billion (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/10/trudeau-cabinet-approves-c-10b-...) that was revealed by Politico. 

Newfoundland Furey Liberals, with the assistance of the Trudeau Liberals, had poured ever more resources into its failing oil industry, even as the industry was abandoning the province. The Trudeau Liberals gave $325 million in subsidies to Furey last fall to keep the oil industry afloat and then added another $41.5 million giveaway for half the cost of building an oil refinery that Husky Oil was about to close (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/west-white-rose-1.5...).

West White Rose Oilfield Extension Project

Cenovus Energy and its partners are moving ahead with the West White Rose oil project, a $3.2-billion expansion of the White Rose oilfield in offshore Newfoundland, and the deal includes changes to how much royalty money the companies will have to pay to the provincial government.

In separate press releases issued Tuesday morning, both Cenovus and Suncor — another partner in the project — said the finalized agreement with the province includes an amended royalty structure that "safeguards to the project's economics in periods of low commodity prices."...

Under the new royalty regime, revenue is fixed at one per cent for the first year or until the companies recoup their new capital costs — whichever is longer. Cenovus said the cost to get to first oil could be $2.3 billion — $1.8 billion to complete the full platform, and $500 million for subsea drilling and other work. How long it takes to recoup costs will depend on oil prices when the project starts producing.

The deal has also replaced the 6.5 per cent royalty when Brent crude trades about $50 US per barrel with a sliding scale — 1.25 per cent when it's trading between $65 and $75 US per barrel, 6.5 per cent when it's between $75 and $90 US per barrel, and 12.5 per cent when it's at $90 or more per barrel.

"We were able to place government's priorities to look, you know, to look at the revenue … to the province against our priorities around risk — especially in low-oil-price environments," said Jonathan Brown, Cenovus's East Coast vice-president.

When Cenovus acquired its ownership stake in the project after buying Husky Energy in late 2020, he said, "decommissioning was the base case. So we've had to work back from that place, and I think that prospect was extremely real," said Brown. ...

Furey also said the government expects the project will lead to about 250 permanent platform jobs, and 1,500 other jobs related to employment ramping up at the construction site in Argentia immediately.

The West White Rose project was suspended in March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, sending oil markets plummeting as travel and other economic sectors ground to a halt.

Work on the fixed wellhead platform — which will be tied back to the SeaRose floating production, storage and offloading vessel, known as an FPSO — shut down at sites in Marystown and Placentia leaving hundreds without work.

Both the federal and provincial governments rejected the idea of buying an equity stake in the project. 

In December 2020, the Newfoundland and Labrador government gave $41.5 million from the federal Oil and Gas Industry Recovery Fund to Husky Energy to keep 331 jobs at the idled project going in the interim.

"The joint venture owners have worked together to significantly de-risk this project over the past 16 months. As a result, we're confident restarting West White Rose provides superior value for our shareholders compared with the option of abandonment and decommissioning," said the company's president and CEO, Alex Pourbaix, in the statement. ...

The expansion is a massive concrete gravity structure that will rise to a height of 145 metres from base to top once complete. Cenovus said it expects first oil from the platform to come in the first half of 2026, with production peaking at around 80,000 barrels a day by the end of 2029. The project is expected to extend the life of the oil field by 14 years and give Cenovus access to an extra 200 million barrels of oil. 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/cenovus-west-white-...

The $3.2 billion West White Rose oil project off Newfoundland just announced by the Trudeau federal Liberals and Newfoundland provincial Liberals just one month after their approval of the Bay du Nord project raises deep concerns among environmentalists and makes a mockery of Trudeau's environmental plans. 

Construction of the West White Rose project was halted in 2020 due to a pandemic plunge in oil prices, but is starting up again with high oil prices and Trudeau and Furey government approval. Photo courtesy of Pennecon

Construction on a paused offshore oil project in Newfoundland is again a go, Alberta-based Cenovus Energy announced Tuesday. The company, which acquired majority owner Husky in 2020, said a new royalty system in the province, along with plans to make the project “net-zero” by 2050, make it a worthwhile venture.

The West White Rose offshore oil project (WWRP), about 350 kilometres east of Newfoundland and Labrador in the Jeanne d’Arc Basin, will drill down 120 metres. The $3.2-billion expansion of the existing White Rose oilfield, which has been operating since 2005, will extend its lifespan by 14 years. Set to be online by 2026, the project is 65 per cent complete, the company said. At its peak, West White Rose will produce about 80,000 barrels per day. ...

The evidence is clear — there is no such thing as fossil fuels without planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, and approving any new expansions or projects contradicts climate goals set out by Canada.

If the world has a chance in limiting global warming to 1.5 C, existing fossil fuel projects actually need to begin shutting down, said Sierra Club Canada Foundation’s Conor Curtis.

“The concepts of green oil and net-zero emissions are nothing more than industry propaganda. All further oil development is opposed to our climate targets,” he said.

Although Cenovus says it will achieve net-zero by 2050, the evidence is clear — there is no such thing as fossil fuels without planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. #WestWhiteRose #OffshoreDrilling #NL #ClimateCrisis

This net-zero greenwashing completely avoids the vast majority of the emissions from this oil, and even oil companies’ plans for that little lack credibility.”

The benefits agreement for WWRP includes royalty fees for the province per barrel of oil produced. This week, Andrew Furey, premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, announced N.L.’s new royalty regime and touted the project as a way to create 1,500 direct and indirect jobs through construction and 250 permanent positions.

The new framework means the province will make more if oil trades at a higher price, but when lower, it will make less.

As Cenovus put it: “... This is a large capital commitment and the royalty framework ensures we are able to protect returns at lower commodity prices, while allowing the province to realize some additional upside at higher prices. The main change to the royalty framework is it provides for lower royalties when prices are low, with royalties increasing when prices rise.”

Curtis likens this to a fossil fuel subsidy.

“The provincial government continues its long history of financial mismanagement by selling out the climate futures of our world and that of N.L.’s own communities for very little benefit. Let me be clear, these companies do not care if their projects end up as economic dead-ends, which is what the world’s experts are saying will be these projects’ fate,” he said.

“They are fine with local communities and ecosystems picking up the bill and they don’t care if we lose more communities to wildfires or see them erode before rising seas. They do not care if fisheries collapse because of warming oceans.”

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/06/03/news/west-white-rose-offshor...

The Bay du Nord offshore Newfoundland oil project environmental assessment report commissioned by the Trudeau Liberals was approved and released on August 9th, despite admitting numerous hazards in going ahead with the project, of course. Here are some of the hazards in the words of the report. 

The border of Newfoundland’s regional assessment area within which oil and gas exploration requires no federal environmental assessment, and four offshore projects are in production, along with the recently approved Bay du Nord project. Map: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

 

The Project’s greatest potential for environment effects from routine operations include:

•   effects on fish and fish habitat caused by the discharge of drilling waste (drilling fluid and cuttings), installation of seabed infrastructure, and the discharge of produced water;

•   effects on marine mammals and fish caused by underwater sound emissions from subsea

  infrastructure construction, well site surveys, seismic surveys, FPSO, MODUs;

•   effects on migratory birds caused by light emissions from the construction vessels, FPSO,

  MODUs, seismic vessels, tankers, supply vessels, maintenance vessels, and flaring; and effects

  caused by produced water; and

  interference with domestic commercial, Indigenous, foreign fisheries and related fishery

research caused by establishment of safety exclusion zones around the FPSO, MODUs, subsea infrastructure and seismic vessels.

Accidents and malfunctions scenarios such as batch spills of diesel fuel, crude oil and drilling muds as well as subsea blowouts could occur during development drilling and production operation phases causing adverse environmental effects. Oil spill fate and trajectory modelling and analyses were performed to evaluate potential effects of these accidental spills and to assist in spill response planning.

https://iaac-aeic.gc.ca/050/documents/p80154/138155E.pdf

Premier Furey and the Liberals popularity at 40% have dropped significantly placing them in a statistical tie with the PCs at 42% while NDP support is stable at 16%. 

Satisfaction with the overall performance of the Liberal government in Newfoundland and Labrador led by Premier Andrew Furey has not changed significantly over the past three months, albeit results appear to continue a downward trend, according to the latest survey by Narrative Research. Approximately one-half (47%, versus 50% in May 2022) are satisfied, while a similar proportion are dissatisfied (48%, compared with 47%). Results are similar across the province and demographic segments.

Voting intentions, on the other hand, have shifted compared with three months ago. The PCs and Liberals are now relatively on par in terms of voting intentions, with an increase in support for the PCs (42%, up from 32% in May 2022) and a decrease in support for the Liberals (40%, down from 48%). Support for the New Democratic Party is unchanged (16%, compared with 17%). The Liberals lead in Western/Labrador, whereas the PCs have a lead in Central/Eastern. On the Avalon, it is a tighter race between Liberals and PCs. Preference for the Liberals is elevated among residents 55 or older, while preference for the PCs is elevated among those 35 to 54 years old. The NDPs have a stronger performance among those 18 to 34 years than among older age segments.

Preference for premier has similarly shifted with the gap between Premier Andrew Furey and PC Party interim leader, David Brazil, closing. Three in ten prefer Furey for premier (31%, down from 40% in May 2022), while a similar proportion prefer Brazil (28%, compared with 22% in May 2022). Preference for interim leader of the NDP Jim Dinn is stable (13%, Libcompared with 15%).

https://narrativeresearch.ca/voting-intentions-have-shifted-this-quarter...

The Furey Liberal government in Newfoundland is offering ExxonMobil up to $80 million if it invests more money in the offshore at a time when oil prices are sky high!

Newfoundland and Labrador is preparing to give ExxonMobil up to $80 million of public money to entice the energy giant to further invest in its offshore oil industry.

On Thursday, the province announced ExxonMobil was eligible to receive reimbursements for the cost of further exploratory drilling off the coast. ExxonMobil is looking for oil in a region called the Jeanne d’Arc Basin. The company can recoup up to $30 million on its second exploration well and up to $50 million for its third. The province allows ExxonMobil to collect this cash through its Offshore Exploration Initiative.

“The Offshore Exploration Initiative has provided an incentive which supports near-term drilling activity and employment,” Energy Minister Andrew Parsons said in a statement. “We continue to support the oil and gas industry during this time of transition.”

ExxonMobil says it is evaluating next steps with an eye toward exploratory drilling in 2023. In a statement, president Lazaro Cosma called the province’s plan to fork over tens of millions “an important consideration in our decision-making.”

The Texas-headquartered oil major is making money hand over fist. In its second quarter alone, ExxonMobil reported nearly $18 billion in profit, up $12.3 billion from the same time last year, as the price of oil skyrocketed.

Greenpeace Canada senior energy strategist Keith Stewart told Canada’s National Observer that Newfoundland and Labrador’s plan is “like giving money to Bill Gates to buy a computer.”

“If we're going to be investing public money in energy systems, it should be in low-carbon energy systems that contribute to stopping climate change rather than accelerating it,” he said.

“And a company like ExxonMobil that has adamantly refused to invest in renewable energy and has been resisting action on climate change for decades, should not be getting public money to do their core business, which is to take carbon out of the ground and throw it up into the atmosphere,” he added.

ExxonMobil boasts multibillion-dollar investments in lower-carbon fuels and carbon capture technologies and presents these as climate solutions. However, a comprehensive study published earlier this year in PLOS ONE found a wide gap between oil majors’ public relations messaging and their actual business plans. The study called ExxonMobil a “flagrant example, having strategically denied climate change and propagated disinformation to mislead the public for over 20 years.”

ExxonMobil’s exploration plans come as other oil majors invest in offshore projects. Equinor is looking to develop the Bay du Nord project after getting approval from the federal government earlier this year, and BP recently got out of the oilsands and went east. 

Giving #ExxonMobil money to drill is like "giving money to Bill Gates to buy a computer" says @climatekeith.

Newfoundland and Labrador’s economy is in dire straits after massive cost overruns at Muskrat Falls, a hydroelectric dam built by Crown corporation Nalcor Energy that pushed the province to the brink. When oil prices collapsed in the spring of 2020, the province was reportedly weeks away from running out of cash and losing the ability to pay for services. That economic crisis is driving a recovery plan called The Big Reset that banks much of the province’s future on kick-starting new oil production to make up for falling revenue.

That report says there is essentially a 10-year window to sanction new oil projects before the global energy transition takes that revenue stream off the table for the province. That’s why the province is going all out to incentivize oil companies to further explore its offshore area today.

Exploring for oil at sea comes with a wide range of environmental damages. First, identifying where to drill involves towing airguns behind ships and blasting sound waves at the ocean floor to record what bounces back. These blasts are 100,000 times louder than a jet engine and go off every 10 seconds, harming marine life that need to hear to find food and communicate. It also pushes marine life away from their habitats.

Exploration drilling also comes with risks of spills and leaks. The largest spill in U.S. history, the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, came from an exploration well. It killed 11 people and more than 100,000 birds, turtles and marine mammals, as well as an unknown number of fish.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/09/19/news/nl-offers-exxonmobil-80...

More evidence that there are more Bay du Nord (the controversial oil field approved by the federal Trudeau Liberals and provincial Furey Liberals in April) oil field projects on the way with new natural gas production being a byproduct of these projects. This is despite the fact that once again the federal Liberals, in the form of Environment Minister, is suggesting that this could be the last one approved as Canada moves away from fossil fuels. After all, the oil industry doesn't believe its the end of offshore Newfoundland oil projects, noting that Trudeau Liberal government funding has been used to explore for and identify 20 such offshore Newfoundland potential projects during the last decade. More fossil fuel exploration in the Newfoundland offshore even occurred this summer with more on the way starting in November and next year.  Doesn't this all sound so familiar, coming from the Liberals? 

Meanwhile environmentalists warn against all of this fossil fuel expansion. "It's almost like they think they're living on a different planet,"  said Gretchen Fitzgerald, the Sierra Club Canada Foundation's national programs director. "We know that if we want a safe future for our kids and a sustainable economy going forward, there can be no new oil exploration. Full stop,"

LNG Newfoundland and Labrador, proposed a natural gas development project that starts with the central gas export hub, in the centre of the existing production fields in the Jeanne D’Arc basin. The gas supply is currently expected to be produced as a by-product of current oil production in the region

(https://theogm.com/2021/09/22/noia-major-gas-announcement-for-offshore-n...)

The controversial approval by the federal government of Bay du Nord in April was accompanied by strong hints from Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault that it might be the last expansion of the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore oil industry.

"It would be very difficult for a new project to pass the bar," Guilbeault said at the time, referring to increasingly tight environmental regulations adopted in 2019 and the increasing price oil companies will have to pay for their emissions. "The more time passes, the more unfavourable conditions will be for oil projects," he said.

But that message doesn't seem to be discouraging oil companies, or the person in charge of Newfoundland and Labrador's government-owned oil company, OilCo CEO Jim Keating.

"We've already heard about the tremendous benefit of Bay du Nord. Just imagine three or four more of those in the span of the next decade," Keating told CBC News on Thursday.

Keating turned heads during his recent speech at the Energy N.L. conference in St. John's, where he suggested three or four new producing fields are possible within the next 10 years, and boasted about a new prospect called Blue Jacket, and how oil companies are said to be drooling over it.

Keating says Blue Jacket could be the next Bay du Nord, calling it "a prospect like no other."

What's more, he said it's one of 20 prospects discovered during a government-funded seismic exploration program over the last decade that have one-billion-barrel potential.

"It's simply massive. We know there's interest from some companies, even some new entrants, so I'm very hopeful, cautiously optimistic that we'll see a resurgence in exploration," he said.

Keating's speech to the Energy N.L. conference came at a time of renewed hope and enthusiasm for the province's oil and gas industry, which was hit hard by the pandemic

There are exploration and seismic campaigns planned for this summer, and more in the works for next year. Cenovus and its partners have announced a restart of the West White Rose expansion project, and the Terra Nova floating production, storage and offloading vessel is expected to be producing oil once again by the end of this year.

OilCo is also preparing two resource assessments for November's call for bids for offshore exploration licences, which includes the Blue Jacket prospect in a frontier area called the Salar Basin. Keating has compared the Blue Jacket geoscience data to major discoveries in places like Guyana and Suriname, where he said companies like ExxonMobil are spending billions to develop oilfields.

Keating said Blue Jacket is almost double the size of the Ephesus prospect in the Orphan Basin, which is scheduled to be explored by BP Canada during a drilling campaign in 2023.

But Keating's bullish outlook is not popular with environmentalists like Gretchen Fitzgerald of St. Anthony. "It's almost like they think they're living on a different planet," Fitzgerald, the Sierra Club Canada Foundation's national programs director, said Thursday from her home office in Halifax.

The Sierra Club has launched a court challenge against the federal decision to approve Equinor's Bay du Nord project, which could be producing up to 200,000 barrels per day by the end of this decade.

"Other projects will be opposed heavily," said Fitzgerald. "We will continue to watch and challenge future projects legally where possible."

Fitzgerald says the province should focus on renewable energy projects and set an example the rest of the world can follow. "We know that if we want a safe future for our kids and a sustainable economy going forward, there can be no new oil exploration. Full stop," she said. ...

Keating says the pandemic and Russian invasion of Ukraine have exposed the need to balance climate change mitigation with energy security and affordability. Meanwhile, the number of companies looking for oil and gas has dropped significantly since the pandemic, and the fact many of the world's biggest players are continuing to invest in the offshore industry is encouraging, said Keating.

But that opinion is not universal. "I think it's a real shame that people are selling this very uncertain and dangerous industry when there are clear solutions," said Fitzgerald.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/oil-offshore-future...

Liberal Premier Furey has climbed back into the lead with 47% support for the Liberals compared to 34% for the PCs and 16% for the NDP. 

Satisfaction with the overall performance of the Liberal government in Newfoundland and Labrador led by Premier Andrew Furey has improved compared with three months ago, according to the latest survey by Narrative Research. Close to six in ten (58%) are now satisfied, up from 47 percent in August 2022. Avalon residents are most likely to report satisfaction, while those in Central/Eastern NL are least likely to be satisfied.

Voting intentions also see a shift compared with three months ago, giving the Liberals a lead in terms of voter support. The Liberals now stand at 47 percent support (compared with 40% in August 2022), and the PCs at 34 percent (compared with 42%). Support for the New Democratic Party is unchanged from three months ago (16%).

Preference for premier has similarly shifted with the gap between Premier Andrew Furey and PC Party interim leader, David Brazil, increasing. Four in ten prefer Furey for premier (40%, up from 31% in August 2022), while one-quarter prefer Brazil (23%, compared with 28%). Preference for interim leader of the NDP Jim Dinn stands at 15 percent (compared with 13%).

https://narrativeresearch.ca/voting-intentions-have-shifted-and-the-libe...

Premier Legault has said that he may be able to negotiate a better deal for Newfoundland's Churchill Falls electricity sales to Quebec in return for guarantees on future sales and prices when the deal wassigned at woefully low 0.2 cents/kwh in 1969 runs out in 2041. 

 Quebec Premier François Legault says he is open to making “adjustments” to the Churchill Falls energy agreement between his province and Newfoundland and Labrador ahead of the official end to the contract in 2041.

Speaking to reporters ahead of his two-day trip to St. John’s, Legault said Quebec is open to paying more for the electricity generated from Churchill Falls in exchange for a “very advantageous” price for power when the existing agreement ends in 18 years.

“Are there any adjustments to be made, between now and 2041, to, on balance, say that there are (gains) for Newfoundland?” Legault said. 

“It will depend on the price that Newfoundland offers us from 2041. If we are offered a very advantageous price starting in 2041, are we ready to make payments before 2041? It’s going to be part of what’s going to be asked, probably.”

https://cfjctoday.com/2023/02/22/ahead-of-energy-talks-quebec-premier-sa...

Here are more details on discussions between Legault and Furey on a post 2041 Churchill Falls hydro deal. 

Quebec Premier Francois Legault says he is ready to make "adjustments" to the Churchill Falls energy agreement between his province and Newfoundland and Labrador ahead of the official end to the contract in 2041.

Speaking to reporters ahead of his two-day trip to St. John's, Legault said Quebec is open to paying more for the electricity generated from Churchill Falls in exchange for a "very advantageous" price for power when the existing agreement ends in 18 years.

"Are there any adjustments to be made, between now and 2041, to, on balance, say that there are (gains) for Newfoundland?" Legault said.

"It will depend on the price that Newfoundland offers us from 2041. If we are offered a very advantageous price starting in 2041, are we ready to make payments before 2041? It's going to be part of what's going to be asked, probably."

 Legault was referring to meetings scheduled later this week between himself and Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey. Legault is expected to arrive in St. John's to dine with Furey on Thursday evening, and energy talks are scheduled for the next day. The talks will be "high level," Furey said Wednesday, describing them as "discussions" rather than negotiations.

The 1969 Churchill Falls deal allows Quebec's provincially owned hydroelectric utility, Hydro-Quebec, to purchase 85 per cent of the electricity generated at the station in central Labrador -- and reap most of the profits.

Under the agreement, Hydro-Quebec pays a fixed price of 0.2 cents per kilowatt hour for Churchill Falls power. By comparison, the utility made an average of 8.2 cents per kilowatt hour on power it sold outside the province in 2022, according to a Hydro-Quebec news release on Wednesday.

As of 2019, the deal has yielded close to $28 billion in profits to Quebec, and about $2 billion for Newfoundland and Labrador.

The contract was challenged unsuccessfully in Quebec Superior Court. Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation Ltd., a subsidiary of Crown corporation Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, argued that Hydro-Quebec had a duty to renegotiate the contract because the lopsided profit structure was unforeseen in 1969. Appeals ultimately made it to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled in 2018 that there was no legal obligation to reopen the deal.

Furey acknowledged the existing deal is "an emotionally charged issue" for his province.

"There is a generation of ill will and distrust between Newfoundlanders and Labradorians and Hydro-Quebec. That relationship needs to change; that trust needs to change," he said.

Furey told reporters on Wednesday that he finds the idea of reopening the arrangement "most interesting."

"That would show an ability to work together. That would show an ability to build trust," he said. "But again, I can't stress enough, I'm not about to do a bad deal."

The province is in a strong negotiating position, Furey added, noting, "We're not on bended knee to Quebec. Quebec is coming to us."

Legault has made the renewal of the Churchill Falls deal a key piece of his energy strategy as the province tries to lower greenhouse gas emissions and meet its growing electricity needs. He told reporters Wednesday he expects a long negotiation.

"It might seem far away but constructing a dam -- if you include negotiations with Indigenous communities -- on average in Quebec, it has taken between 12 and 15 years," Legault said. He acknowledged that the existing Churchill Falls agreement has been particularly beneficial for his province.

"Andrew Furey -- he's already talked to me about this -- will make all sorts of demands; we'll listen to him about what is a priority for him," Legault said.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government assembled a panel last year to determine how the province could best capitalize on the end of the Churchill Falls deal in 2041. It issued a statement Tuesday saying it has made its recommendations to the province, adding that details would not be made public to protect the province's negotiating position.

However, the panel recommended that the province ensure Indigenous people in Labrador are properly consulted about the future of the Churchill River, from which the Labrador generating station gets its power.

The Innu of Uashat mak Mani-utenam in Quebec filed a $2.2-billion lawsuit against Hydro-Quebec earlier this year, claiming the Churchill Falls hydroelectric station has destroyed a significant part of their traditional territory. In 2020, the Innu Nation in Labrador sued Hydro-Quebec and Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corp. for $4 billion for the ecological and cultural damage caused by the damming of the upper Churchill River in the early 1970s.

Furey said he informed Innu Nation Grand Chief Etienne Rich on Tuesday that Legault was coming to the province for talks. "I will certainly provide him an update on Friday after the discussions," he added.

The Churchill Falls facility has a generating capacity of 5,400 megawatts; it produces about 34 billion kilowatt-hours annually. The generating station and transmission equipment in Labrador is owned and operated by the Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corp. Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro owns 65.8 per cent of that corporation's shares, and Hydro-Quebec owns the rest.

Hydro-Quebec will maintain its 34.2 per cent share of Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corp. when the contract expires in 2041.

"Newfoundland and Labrador is very much in a listening position," Furey said, adding, "I'm willing to listen, to move to the next page."

https://www.iheartradio.ca/cjad/news/ahead-of-quebec-premier-s-visit-pro...

The Trudeau Liberals continue to push the development of the $16 billion Bay du Nord oil project offshore in Newfounland despite the warnings of more than 200 global environmental groups, indigenous people, and a 2022 "damning" report of the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat warning of widespread problems with the project and the new growing risks made obvious by climate change induced Hurricane Fiona that hit Atlantic Canada in the fall of 2022 with the most powerful storm to ever hit the region. 

St. John’s Harbour is the primary hub for Newfoundland’s offshore oil industry (Photography by Adam Hefferman)

The Pass is a deep basin carved into the ocean floor, under which lies at least 500 million barrels of recoverable oil, first discovered in 2013 by the Norwegian oil and gas firm Equinor. Today, the company plans to open this inhospitable seascape to the most ambitious offshore-oil undertaking in Canadian history. ... Equinor has dubbed the Flemish Pass a “new frontier” in deepwater oil, farther to sea than any prior offshore project in Canada. ... The $16-billion project, to be called Bay du Nord, will be majority-owned by Equinor, with BP holding a smaller stake. ... 

For Bay du Nord’s opponents, including environmental activists and Indigenous communities who’ve spent years fighting the project, the future is exactly the point. Ian Miron is a lawyer with the environmental group Ecojustice, which has lobbied against Bay du Nord. “Our federal government says that it understands climate science,” he says. “So it should understand that Canada can’t be a climate leader and approve fossil-fuel infrastructure projects like this one.”  That’s to say nothing of the more localized hazards. In lockstep with Equinor’s language of frontiers and discovery is a language of danger: of unpredictable conditions at sea, chemical waste, spills, leaks and blowouts. The history of Newfoundland’s offshore is littered with accidents, tragedies and disasters. As recently as 2018, Husky Energy’s SeaRose project spilled 250,000 litres of oil into the Atlantic—the largest such incident in the province’s history. ...

Should Bay du Nord go forward, some of its roughly 40 wells will be drilled to 1,170 metres below the waves—almost 10 times the depth of the province’s second-deepest project, the SeaRose, which sits at a comparatively shallow 120 metres over the Grand Banks, west of Bay du Nord. ...

A blowout is only one of the environmental hazards at play with a project as large and remote as Bay du Nord—there are also risks of leaks, disturbances to underwater ecosystems and collisions between supply ships and marine life. In 2019, Equinor submitted its environmental impact study to the federal government, outlining those potential risks and mishaps, along with its plans to prevent them and deal with spills or other problems should they occur. Two years passed as analysts with the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada parsed Equinor’s submission, returning to the company to ask for new information and amendments. In July of 2020, Equinor submitted a revised, 434-page report. It concluded neatly: routine operations will be unlikely to result in adverse environmental impacts. The federal government’s decision—to approve or not—was expected that same year. ...

In May 2021, the International Energy Agency—the Paris-based advisory organization that produces forecasts and reports relied on by the global energy industry—issued a special report stating that developing new oil and gas deposits was incompatible with keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, as advocated by the Paris Agreement, to which Canada is a signatory. “If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now, from this year,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol told media. The report sparked new debate about the future of Canada’s oil and gas assets. “It’s always been bizarre logic to me, the idea that because Newfoundland is so dependent on oil and gas, it should take the longest to transition,” says Conor Curtis. It’s exactly those economies and communities most dependent, he says, that should be moving faster than everyone else to change. ... 

The Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat—a group of federal scientists who provide advice and peer review to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, or DFO—released its own independent review of Equinor’s environmental submission to the federal government. Its takeaways were damning. The report outlined what it characterized as omissions and mischaracterizations in Equinor’s submission. It said the company had downplayed the potential for ship strikes with marine animals. It said the possibility of an “extremely large spill” was 16 per cent over the project’s lifetime, despite Equinor’s impact statement referring to it as “extremely unlikely.” It oversimplified the effects of a blowout, failing to heed the lessons of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 that killed 11 workers and spilled 134 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Spawning grounds for capelin, an important Newfoundland fish species, would be threatened, which would have knock-on effects on endangered species including American plaice and killer whales, which feed on them. A blowout could lead to slicks of oil spreading across sensitive areas of coral and sponges and damage shrimp and cod habitats. The review ultimately concluded that Equinor’s submission wasn’t a credible source of information.

Montreal-based environmental lawyer Shelley Kath—who did consulting work with Steven Guilbeault in his Équiterre days—was commissioned last year by an environmental organization called stand.earth to analyze the report’s findings. She concluded that Equinor’s revised impact statement, used as the basis for the federal approval, failed to address many of the DFO scientists’ critiques. It continued to underestimate the potential for ship strikes with marine mammals (like whales), mischaracterized the effects of oil spills on marine life and, perhaps most significantly, downplayed the potential for a major oil spill. Equinor’s final revised impact statement continued to refer to a large spill as “extremely unlikely,” despite that 16 per cent likelihood.

“That just on its face gives one a queasy feeling,” says Kath. “A sense of the proponent not taking the criticisms seriously.” Kath points out that a spill in the Flemish Pass, in the inner branch of the Labrador Current, could rapidly spread oil southward through waters rich with marine life.

In March of 2022, more than 200 environmental groups across Canada and worldwide jointly called on Guilbeault to reject the project. That same month, Sierra Club Canada held a media briefing on Bay du Nord. “The world is changing, and climate change is already here,” said Amy Norman, an Inuk environmental activist from Labrador, during the event. “Already we’re seeing impacts here in Labrador and in Newfoundland. Unreliable sea ice, warming temperatures, more frequent storms, unpredictable weather. It’s already impacting our ways of life, and it’s already changing how we live on these lands.”

That reality was thrown into relief last fall, when Hurricane Fiona hit Atlantic Canada. The storm caused more than $800 million in damage,washing away buildings and killing a woman from the town of Port aux Basques, who was swept out to sea along with the contents of her home. The damage, of course, was to be repaired with money from the same provincial coffers to which Bay du Nord is to contribute. ...

On April 6, the decision finally came down: a green light.

https://macleans.ca/longforms/bay-du-nord-oil-gas-newfoundland/

There are more than 200 environmental groups from around the world fighting this project. Bay du Nord estimates of potential barrels of oil that could be produced from this oilfield have recently grown with more exploration of the field from 300 million barrels to more than 900 million barrels. An oil spill off the Newfoundland coast could cause major damage throughout Atlantic Canada. 

Photos: Giant Platform Towed to Hebron Field Offshore Newfoundland and Labrador: more may soon be joining them including from Qatar Energy in the Flemish Pass and Norway's Equinor Bay du Nord projects in the new black gold rush created by the war in Ukraine

Newfoundland and Labrador is sitting on billions of dollars in potential oil revenue. It's also, subsequently, generating billions of kilograms of greenhouse gases.  Despite that, politicians repeatedly espouse the environmental virtues of the province's crude — a posture that has raised the stakes of a long-awaited federal government decision on Bay du Nord, an ambitious project that would move the province's offshore oil industry into deep waters never yet drilled off Canada's East Coast. 

The Bay du Nord oil, buried under more than a kilometre of seawater in an area of the Atlantic known as the Flemish Pass, is allegedly "the cleanest in the world," as Liberal MP Ken MacDonald told reporters late last month. ...

But just how clean can oil get?

"When they say the cleanest oil in the country or the greenest oil in the country, well, what they're actually saying is that the production of oil is going to produce less greenhouse gas emissions," said Jean Philippe Sapinski, an assistant professor at the University of Moncton and researcher with the Corporate Mapping Project, which follows the fossil fuel industry in Canada. "It's not the production of oil that's damaging; it's when we burn the oil. And the oil is extracted to be burned."

Extraction "includes things like flaring, venting methane into the air, fixing methane leaks," explained Paasha Mahdavi, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California. Oil taken from Newfoundland's offshore is, technically, "a green comparison to, for example, the tarsands, which are very energy-intensive to produce and process." But like Sapinski, Mahdavi explains most greenhouse gases in a barrel of oil don't come from the extraction process. The entire procedure, from taking it out of the ground to exporting it, accounts for only about 15 per cent of a barrel's total emissions. "So you can have the absolute cleanest oil produced," Mahdavi said, "and you can still only absorb one-sixth of the emissions problem."

Unlike bitumen from Alberta's oilsands, it usually doesn't need extra processing to force it through a pipeline.

So when politicians talk about "clean oil," Mahdavi said, "there is some meaning to it, in the sense of the carbon intensity of oil."

Those include geological components, he says: how much sulfur is in the oil, for instance, or how "heavy" or thick the product is. 

• Heavy crude now makes up about half of N.L.'s production

But when the oil is actually burned for energy — as jet fuel, gasoline or furnace oil — the differences between types of crude all but evaporate.

According to the Carnegie oil climate index, crude from one of Newfoundland's offshore projects, Hibernia, emits 436 kilograms of carbon per barrel when burned, compared with 466 kilograms of carbon emitted from diluted bitumen from Alberta's oilsands. That's a difference of six per cent. ...

No oil is truly clean. But when politicians talk about "clean oil," says Jordan Kinder, they may also be referring to Canada's specific regulations: its policies to control greenhouse gas emissions, like the kind contained in last month's climate plan.

Kinder, a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University, said it's true those policies are better than a lot of oil-producing regions. "But the bar is low." Kinder has been following greenwashing in the oil industry for over a decade. He points to Ezra Levant's 2011 book, Ethical Oil, as kickstarting an argument in support of Canadian crude that has today entered the mainstream. Levant's was largely viewed as a fringe position at first. "That's changing," Kinder said.  "Certain elements of this argument have been adopted as common sense. That's something that you see in some of the discussion around [the Bay du Nord] project in particular, is that you can make statements about the cleanliness of oil without much qualification, when it demands qualification."

Fossil fuel expansionism is then justified, he explains, under those climate plans and regulations; as long as some carbon is sequestered, for instance, or some profits are invested into renewable energy, then it's viewed as politically acceptable to keep extracting the oil.  "There's a commitment to a certain kind of future embedded within these new projects," Kinder said, "that says we are still going to be relying on oil."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/can-nl-have-clean-o...

Lawyers representing Equinor and the federal government this week have pushed back against arguments by Équiterre, Sierra Club Canada Foundation, and the indigenous Mi’gmawe’l Tplu’taqnn Incorporated (MTI) that Canada’s first deepwater offshore oil project, Bay du Nord, was unlawfully approved. Once again the Trudeau government promises it plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while developing new fossil fuel projects, making Canada "the only G7 country that has increased its emissions since ratifying the Paris Agreement in 2015"  (https://splash247.com/environmental-and-indigenous-groups-challenge-cana...)

Equinor lawyer arguing in court that the lawsuit against developing the Bay du Nord oil project should be dismissed.

Lawyers representing Equinor and the federal government on Thursday pushed back against arguments that Canada’s first deepwater offshore oil project was unlawfully approved. 

In April 2022, Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault approved Bay du Nord, stating it was environmentally sound. He determined the project, about 500 kilometres east of St. John’s in Newfoundland, “is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects.” Opponents were quick to condemn the approval, noting the significant emissions that would come from the project and the risk it poses to marine life.

In Ottawa on Wednesday, lawyers on behalf of Sierra Club Canada, Equiterre and Mi'gmawe'l Tplu'taqnn Incorporated (MTI) — a group representing eight Mi’gmaq communities in New Brunswick — said Guilbeault didn’t have the full picture when considering the project’s environmental effects. Notably missing from the environmental assessment he based his approval on, they argued, were downstream emissions (when the oil is burned) and the potential effects marine shipping activity could have on the environment and Mi'kmaq rights.

On Thursday, Equinor lawyer Sean Sutherland confirmed that while assessing the project, the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada didn’t include downstream emissions, but said the groups had ample opportunities to request that those issues be addressed during the public consultation process. 

Regarding downstream emissions, he said it is common practice for them not to be included in environmental assessments.

“Indeed, in a project EA, it is impossible to identify ultimate downstream uses, the regulations that may apply to those emissions, mitigation measures, and justification,” reads court documents. 

He also dismissed the idea that marine shipping was omitted from the assessment, saying there was a reasonable inclusion of potential effects from marine tankers. Sutherland noted Equinor doesn’t know where any of this oil will be shipped yet, and some products might go straight to international markets from the production site, making it difficult to describe the full picture of tanker activity.

He focused heavily on arguments around Equinor’s openness to engage with environmental groups and First Nations, and what he said were numerous examples of the opponents weighing in on the project, and that they didn’t focus on marine shipping or downstream emissions. 

Dayna Anderson, a lawyer for the Attorney General of Canada, said consultations with First Nations, specifically those represented by MTI, were thorough. During the process, the government deemed the duty to consult with the group as “low” because of the project’s distance from land and “therefore impacts to MTI’s rights would be minimal,” court documents read.

MTI never agreed to that designation and maintained it was not given enough time and resources to weigh in on and get information on how marine shipping could impact the environment, specifically the endangered Atlantic salmon population that migrates between the Bay of Fundy and the Bay du Nord area.

Ultimately, environmental lawyer Joshua Ginsberg said MTI’s participation was “incomplete,” and that the group’s requests for more information and communication were not met. He said groups not only weighed in during the official process, but they sent letters to Guilbeault and spent significant resources speaking to media and raising concerns specifically around emissions and the transport of oil.

Even though Bay du Nord, if financed and completed, will be hundreds of kilometres from land, Ginsberg said its effects would be felt far beyond the project area. The planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from the project will know no borders, and if a spill were to occur, it would inevitably harm marine life. Ginsberg argues it is necessary to assess the impacts of marine shipping and what downstream emissions could mean for Canada’s climate goals.

There is no specific date set for a decision, but Federal Court Justice Russel W. Zinn noted “it may take some time” based on the volume of information.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/feds-equinor-push-back-court-191355395.html

There is even more criticism of the Trudeau and Furey Liberal governments approving and funding of offshore Newfoundland oil projects that will last decades as the world starts to transition out of fossil fuels. 

A critic of the oil and gas industry says funding for the sector in Newfoundland and Labrador's new budget is a step in the wrong direction. Angela Carter, a climate and energy policy researcher at the University of Waterloo, says Newfoundland and Labrador's increasing funds to the oil and gas sector in the 2023 budget goes against the advice of climate experts.© CBC

The budget, announced by Finance Minister Siobhan Coady last week, includes nearly $70 million to help build the offshore oil and gas industry at a time when experts around the world are calling on governments to transition away from fossil fuels. The funding includes over $13 million for seismic work and $50 million for a program to encourage offshore exploration.

Angela Carter, an environmental policy researcher and professor at the University of Waterloo, says the budget is a complete left turn from what climate experts and economists say about where the demand for oil is going. "This is all about developing a sector, when we know that global oil demand is on the verge of peaking," Carter said Monday. "We don't transition off of fossil fuels by developing more fossil fuels. You know, it's like if a patient with cancer shows up to a doctor's office and they've got cancer because they've been smoking. Well, you don't get off of or get away from cancer by smoking a little bit more … but this is exactly what's happening in this case here."

Carter, who is from Newfoundland and Labrador, also opposed the exploration incentives by the provincial government, benefiting ExxonMobil, citing the corporation's record profits of nearly $56 billion US last year. "This is putting funds not only in the wrong direction, but in a direction that makes our problem worse," she said. "The benefits in terms of jobs and economic revenues really is on the transition, rather than trying to foster this sunsetting industry."

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/nls-full-speed-ahead-approach-to-o...

Besides the financial risks described in the last post, offshore oil projects, such as Bay du Nord create enormous environmental risks, including the phony claim that it is "clean" oil giving off little in the way of emissions. Many of the arguments put forward by governments and fossil fuels involving greenwashing come straight from the fringe in the form of ultra-right-winger Ezra Levant's book, Ethical Oil.

Newfoundland and Labrador is sitting on billions of dollars in potential oil revenue. It's also, subsequently, generating billions of kilograms of greenhouse gases.  Despite that, politicians repeatedly espouse the environmental virtues of the province's crude — a posture that has raised the stakes of a long-awaited federal government decision on Bay du Nord, an ambitious project that would move the province's offshore oil industry into deep waters never yet drilled off Canada's East Coast. 

The Bay du Nord oil, buried under more than a kilometre of seawater in an area of the Atlantic known as the Flemish Pass, is allegedly "the cleanest in the world," as Liberal MP Ken MacDonald told reporters late last month. He's not the only one framing the crude as a good thing for the climate, a marketable replacement for so-called dirtier oils around the world. The provincial government, too, took a hard line on its petroleum resources last year, calling its offshore deposits "low-carbon" over a dozen times in a 35-page oil and gas industry report. ...

But just how clean can oil get? "When they say the cleanest oil in the country or the greenest oil in the country, well, what they're actually saying is that the production of oil is going to produce less greenhouse gas emissions," said Jean Philippe Sapinski, an assistant professor at the University of Moncton and researcher with the Corporate Mapping Project, which follows the fossil fuel industry in Canada. "It's not the production of oil that's damaging; it's when we burn the oil. And the oil is extracted to be burned." ...

Extraction "includes things like flaring, venting methane into the air, fixing methane leaks," explained Paasha Mahdavi, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California. Oil taken from Newfoundland's offshore is, technically, "a green comparison to, for example, the tarsands, which are very energy-intensive to produce and process." But like Sapinski, Mahdavi explains most greenhouse gases in a barrel of oil don't come from the extraction process. The entire procedure, from taking it out of the ground to exporting it, accounts for only about 15 per cent of a barrel's total emissions. "So you can have the absolute cleanest oil produced," Mahdavi said, "and you can still only absorb one-sixth of the emissions problem." ...

Unlike bitumen from Alberta's oilsands, it usually doesn't need extra processing to force it through a pipeline. So when politicians talk about "clean oil," Mahdavi said, "there is some meaning to it, in the sense of the carbon intensity of oil." ...

But when the oil is actually burned for energy — as jet fuel, gasoline or furnace oil — the differences between types of crude all but evaporate. According to the Carnegie oil climate index, crude from one of Newfoundland's offshore projects, Hibernia, emits 436 kilograms of carbon per barrel when burned, compared with 466 kilograms of carbon emitted from diluted bitumen from Alberta's oilsands. That's a difference of six per cent. The Bay du Nord project could generate 300 million barrels of oil, which, when burned, would release 130.8 billion kilograms of carbon into the atmosphere.

This graph from the Carnegie Oil-Climate Index shows that most of the greenhouse gas savings from Hibernia crude come from its extraction and processing, not from burning it. (Carnegie Oil-Climate Index)

Kinder, a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University, ... has been following greenwashing in the oil industry for over a decade. He points to Ezra Levant's 2011 book, Ethical Oil, as kickstarting an argument in support of Canadian crude that has today entered the mainstream. Levant's was largely viewed as a fringe position at first. "That's changing," Kinder said.  

"Certain elements of this argument have been adopted as common sense. That's something that you see in some of the discussion around [the Bay du Nord] project in particular, is that you can make statements about the cleanliness of oil without much qualification, when it demands qualification." Fossil fuel expansionism is then justified, he explains, under those climate plans and regulations; as long as some carbon is sequestered, for instance, or some profits are invested into renewable energy, then it's viewed as politically acceptable to keep extracting the oil.  "There's a commitment to a certain kind of future embedded within these new projects," Kinder said, "that says we are still going to be relying on oil." ...

In Jean Philippe Sapinski's, an assistant professor at the University of Moncton and researcher with the Corporate Mapping Project, eyes, investing in oil and gas alongside renewables, as the province intends in the coming years, isn't the answer. The International Energy Agency, he points out, also says that to avoid the harshest costs of climate change, no country can embark on any new carbon-extractive projects. "So no Bay du Nord, no White Rose, no fracking, no nothing. No expansion," he said. "What we need is to wind down the industry. It's critical right now, and the economic impacts, especially on Newfoundland, will be disastrous.… So it doesn't balance out to say we're going to make money from extracting oil, where we're going to be hit by climate change and the economy is going to collapse. Because that's what we're looking at."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/can-nl-have-clean-o...

Furthering illustrating the risk that Canadian banking sector is placing itself and the Canadian economy by so heavily investing in the fossil fuel sector as the world starts to move away from fossil fuels is the cancellation of Newfoundland's $16 billion offshore Bay du Nord oil project by Norway's Equinor for three years, following the cancellation of Terra Nova oil field by Suncor because of falling oil prices, after having been approved by the Trudeau and Furey Liberal governments. The Furey government had promised Suncor $505 million in subsidies. If oil prices do go down significantly, not just Canada's high-cost oil sector but its banking sector will be at risk from overconcentration in fossil fuels. The Sierra Club said its time for the Newfoundland government to wean itself off dependency on fossil fuels for revenue. 

Quote:

Andrew Furey said the news that Equinor would postpone the Bay du Nord project for up to three years came as a surprise. But he said he remains confident the oilfield would still be developed….

Bay du Nord comprises five different discovery areas off the province's east coast that are said to hold a total of 979 million barrels of recoverable oil, according to recent estimates from Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore oil regulator. The development would open the province's fifth offshore oilfield and be its first deepwater oil project. Newfoundland and Labrador’s latest budget factored in economic gains from the Bay du Nord project beginning in 2025.

Equinor announced its "strategic postponement" of the project in a news release Wednesday as the province's annual energy industry conference was taking place in downtown St. John's, N.L. It said Bay du Nord had seen significant cost increases in recent months, mostly due to volatile market conditions. Though the company had not yet confirmed it would make the full investment necessary to carry the project through to completion, there was early-phase work underway, including concept studies and assessments, spokesperson Alex Collins said in an email. She said the company will use the delay to "optimize" the project and work toward a "successful development." …

The postponement is the second bout of bad news for Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore industry this year. The Terra Nova oilfield, which is majority owned by Suncor Energy, is also delayed. The field hasn't produced oil since 2019, and during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic it seemed Suncor and its partners would abandon it entirely. The provincial government ultimately gave Suncor $205 million to guarantee the company would carry on with work to extend the life of the field by about 10 years. The province also made adjustments to its royalty scheme to give Terra Nova owners another $300 million over that decade. Suncor had hoped the field would be back in operation at some point this summer, but it has since removed any production or income forecasts from the project from its financial outlooks for the year. …

The federal government gave Bay du Nord environmental approval last April, drawing sharp criticism from environmentalists. Equinor and the Newfoundland and Labrador government have said the project will produce far fewer greenhouse gas emissions during extraction than any other project in Canada. But environmentalists and climate scientists counter that the bulk of the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are produced when they are burned.

On Wednesday, Sierra Club Canada said the latest news shows Newfoundland and Labrador must wean itself off revenues from offshore oil. "We know that expanding oil and gas extraction ... is unacceptable and that climate change will only be worse in three years time," spokesperson Connor Curtis said in a news release.

https://www.alaskahighwaynews.ca/the-mix/equinor-postponing-bay-du-nord-...—%20Equinor%20is%20pausing%20its%20plan,postponing%20the%20project%20for%20up%20to%20three%20years.

Premier Furey's approval rating has dropped from 62% in March to 47%  on May 24th and that was before the cancellation of two offshore oil projects that may further hurt his approval rating as the economic impact of the loss of these fossil fuel projects hits the province. 

 

Andrew Furey – Newfoundland and Labrador

While Andrew Furey’s westernmost counterpart Eby was in Asia this quarter, Furey and his team visited the Netherlands to “sell, sell, sell” the province’s hydrogen capacity. Furey and Energy Minister Andrew Parsons visited with delegates from 75 countries, signing a declaration to explore opportunities involving a hydrogen-to-ammonia process, considered a key green-hydrogen technology for the province. This memorandum of understanding on hydrogen comes as the province faces a hefty setback, as the Bay Du Nord offshore oil project was delayed three years by Norwegian developer Equinor. The company cited changing market conditions for the adjusted timeline.

After a brief bump in approval in March, Furey settles back at a familiar level of approval this quarter – close to half (47%):

https://angusreid.org/canada-premiers-approval-doug-ford-danielle-smith-...