The CEO of the Canadian Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board says he’s deeply concerned following another oil spill at the Hibernia platform over the weekend.
Production was shut down again over the weekend, only a day after it had resumed following a spill in July. This marks the third spill in the offshore in less than a year. Officials say an estimated 2,200 litres of oil was released into the ocean during a power outage on Saturday.
(Aerial view of Hibernia oil spill in July, 2019. Photo courtesy C-NLOPB.)
Scott Tessier says oil companies in the industry have two fundamental obligations—to keep offshore workers safe and to protect the environment, and he says these recent incidents are failures. Tessier says spills preventable and unacceptable.
Tessier says at this point, the focus is on regulatory oversight of the response at the spill site. He says from there, they will do an investigation into what happened and why, and will share what lessons are learned.
Interim Board for OilCo to be Announced
The interim board for OilCo, the province’s promised stand alone oil and gas offshoot of Nalcor Energy, should be announced in the coming days.
The provincial government announced its plans in the spring budget.
The oil and gas sector is a revenue generator as opposed to Muskrat Falls, the costs of which have doubled to $12.7-billion since sanction.
Premier Dwight Ball says it’s hoped that OilCo will be up and running by the end of the year.
He says they hope to announce the interim board in the next few days and the stand alone oil and gas company will be ready to go by the end of the year.
