BP, the same company responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster that saw 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico, the death of 11 workers, and devastating consequences for local fisheries, economies and communities, has started offshore drilling near Nova Scotia. Equinor (formerly Statoil) is next in line.
On February 1, 2018, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna issued a press release that announced BP’s Scotian Basin Exploration Drilling project was “not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects and the project can proceed.” Only 61 days later, BP spilled 136,000 litres of toxic drilling mud onto the bottom of the Scotian Shelf.
BP has federal approval to drill up to seven exploratory wells between 2018 and 2022. The wells are all on or near the Scotian Shelf, an ecologically significant area in the Atlantic Ocean that is home to whales, seals, sea turtles, fish, corals and birds and successful fisheries.
