The Trudeau government has approved a four year extension on a licence for Corridor Resources Inc. for deepwater oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
The Canadian Press reports, “The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board issued the new four-year, 51,780-hectare exploration licence Sunday [January 15] in a move that required federal and provincial approval.”
This offshore drilling will take place at a site known as Old Harry, which is situated midway between Quebec’s Magdalen Islands and Cape Anguille, the most western point of land on the island of Newfoundland.
APTN has noted, “The Gulf of St. Lawrence is one of the largest marine breeding regions in Canada, with more than 2,000 marine species choosing to spawn, nurse and migrate there year round. It is home to endangered whales and hosts some of the largest lobster production in the world.”
It has also been estimated that there might be as much as 39-trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.5-billion barrels of oil there.
The Gulf of St. Lawrence is about one-sixth the size of the Gulf of Mexico and there are concerns that an incident similar to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster could happen in that area. An oil spill would have devastating consequences on Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
The Council of Canadians has opposed the plan to drill for oil and gas in the Gulf of St. Lawrence since November 2010.
In a recent letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Natural Resources minister Jim Carr, Newfoundland and Labrador Natural Resources minister Siobhan Coady, and the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, Council of Canadians organizer Angela Giles stated, “This new 4-year licence, under the auspices of fulfilling a requirement to consult with Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, puts the Gulf and surrounding communities at unnecessary risk.”
Giles then highlighted, “According to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the federal and Newfoundland and Labrador governments have an obligation to obtain free, prior and informed consent from these Indigenous nations, but nothing has happened in this regard over the past nine years. In fact, the three Indigenous nations whose territory borders the Gulf (Innu, Maliseet and Mi’kmaq) have all called for a moratorium on oil and gas exploration in the Gulf.”
After the decision was announced earlier this month, iPolitics reported, “A coalition of Mi’kmaq, Maliseet and Innu First Nations with traditional territory in the Gulf said a 90-day consultation period in the fall was not enough to satisfy the constitutionally-protected duty to consult and accommodate them.”
That article adds, “The Mi’gmawei Mawiomi Secretariat, a Mi’kmaq organization, are in negotiations with Ottawa and Quebec over a land claim covering northern New Brunswick, parts of Quebec and the Gulf. They claim oil exploration would negatively affect their rights in the region, notably fishing. If the land claim talks go as planned, the level of infringement of the Old Harry license in the Mi’kmaq claim could be very high, [Troy Jerome of the Mi’gmawei Mawiomi Secretariat] said.”
The Council of Canadians is a member of the St. Lawrence Coalition. La Presse has reported that the St. Lawrence Coalition, through Ecojustice, will file a motion against the new licence in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland.
