An article in a well-known industry paper warns the provincial government against overplaying its hand on Bay du Nord.
After putting the massive offshore project on pause to find greater economic efficiencies, Equinor signaled that the topsides for Bay du Nord will be built overseas, but Premier Tony Wakeham campaigned on trying to secure as much local work from the project as possible.
That commitment gained the endorsement of Trades NL, but Upstream journalist Iain Esau says securing a topsides contract for Newfoundland and Labrador seems unlikely.
Esau warns that if local trades and the premier overplay their hand, Equinor and BP could further delay the only offshore oil development currently on the province’s horizon.
Esau suggests that Newfoundland and Labrador and the federal government focus instead on changing legislation allowing oil companies to sit on undeveloped discoveries in perpetuity.
He says significant discovery licenses, (or SDLs) which hold trillions of cubic feet of associated gas off Newfoundland and trillions more of non-associated gas off Labrador, could be commercialized if transferred to other companies
He suggests that Ottawa and NL should bring in new legislation to force oil companies to develop oil and gas held in SDLs or release the assets back to government to auction them off to willing developers.
