The Gulf of St. Lawrence is the world’s largest estuary and the outlet for the Great Lakes via the St. Lawrence River into the Atlantic Ocean. Increasingly, concerned groups are saying that oil and gas exploration and drilling should not take place in the Gulf. Today, the Council of Canadians joined in that call.
David Suzuki with Faisal Moola write, “The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board recently approved a permit allowing Nova Scotia-based Corridor Resources Inc to explore for oil and gas at a location called the Old Harry prospect in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, halfway between the Magdalen Islands and Cape Anguille in western Newfoundland near the Quebec border. The company began seismic testing this fall and could start drilling as early as next year.”
“We saw what happened when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico for three months. Imagine a similar incident in an inland sea one-sixth the size of the Gulf of Mexico. This is a very real fear for people in the five provinces along the Gulf of St. Lawrence — Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia — as well as the French territory of St Pierre and Miquelon.”
“Computer simulations by the David Suzuki Foundation’s Quebec office show that a spill of 10,000 barrels of oil a day over 10 days in different seasons could have a devastating impact on all five provinces along the Gulf of St. Lawrence, affecting tourism, fisheries, and marine life. …Because a spill would affect all the Gulf of St Lawrence provinces and territories, one jurisdiction should not be allowed to exploit the resources without approval from all the other jurisdictions that would be affected by an accident.”
“The Quebec government recently released the results of a strategic environmental assessment that concluded the negative impacts of oil and gas exploitation in the estuary of the St Lawrence would far outweigh the benefits. That led to a ban on exploration in the estuary but not in the Gulf itself. Quebec already had a moratorium on exploration in its Gulf waters, but that could be lifted by late 2012 if the second part of the strategic environmental assessment concludes that the benefits of exploration outweigh the risks.”
“The David Suzuki Foundation has joined other organizations in calling on the federal and provincial governments to develop an integrated management plan for the Gulf and to impose an immediate moratorium on oil and gas exploration and drilling for the entire Gulf.”
The Globe and Mail reported this past August that, “While much attention has been given to the deep oil well being drilled by Chevron hundreds of kilometres off the coast of Newfoundland, the Save Our Seas and Shores Coalition has been trying to stop similar exploration in shallower water much closer to the mainland. Corridor Resources Inc. has been given the license to explore oil and gas resources in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in what is known as the Old Harry prospect, located midway between the Magdalen Islands and Cape Anguille in western Newfoundland. …(In August) the Quebec chapter of the Sierra Club of Canada wrote to the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, the regulatory agency that both promotes exploration and is responsible for its safety, to express its opposition to the enterprise.”
The full StraightGoods.ca article is at http://www.straightgoods.ca/2010/ViewArticle.cfm?Ref=937.
More on this issue at http://www.ecologyaction.ca/content/coalition-calls-leaders-act-immediately-stop-oil-and-gas-exploration-gulf-st-lawrence.
