The federal government continues coming up short in the eyes of those who wish to see an incentive program for oil and gas exploration.
Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan announced a new regulatory measure yesterday to substantially speed up the review process for exploratory drilling projects in the province’s offshore.
He says the assessment will now take approximately 90-days in comparison to over 900-days just three years ago. O’Regan says the old assessment process was not designed for the offshore, and it was a “government at its worst.”
(Rob Strong.)
Long-time industry consultant Rob Strong says the announcement means an added layer of regulatory red tape has been removed for exploration licences in areas where drilling rigs are already operating.
NOIA welcomes the change, but adds that the real thing they need is an incentive program. Something similar to the PIP grants of forty years ago which led to the discovery of several fields off Newfoundland, including Hibernia.
PC Leader Ches Crosbie says shorter timelines for drilling permits are useless if there is no exploration.
Provincial Natural Resources Minister Praises Announcement
The Minister of Natural Resources says a new regional assessment process announced yesterday will ensure that the Newfoundland offshore remains more globally competitive and help to advance exploration.
Last year, Premier Dwight Ball and Minister Siobhan Coady made a presentation before the Senate outlining their concerns with changes introduced in Bill C-69.
Coady says the responsibility for offshore environmental assessment was moved from the C-NLOPB to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.
That meant it could take up to 900 days to complete the environmental assessment on a 30 to 60-day exploration well.
She says in Norway the process takes about 79 days, and 96 in the Gulf of Mexico. The regional environmental process, through the impact assessment agency, will now take about 90 days according to Coady.
