Evidentia

At a time when the ecological catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico shows no signs of abating, and has been spewing up to 60,000 barrels of crude oil into the sea every day since April this year, I am concerned that Corridor Resources of Halifax, Nova Scotia is pushing ahead with plans to drill the Old Harry oil field at the bottom of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

BP has done a terrible job containing the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

We should learn from British Petroleum’s horrendous mismanagement of the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, the death of platform workers, and the ongoing spill of oil from the wellhead one and a half kilometres below the surface. Old Harry should be put on hold, at least long enough for the federal government of Canada and the five provinces bordering on the Gulf to conduct rigorous environmental assessments, with proper public hearings. Even more than that, we need a public inquiry into offshore drilling in this country.

Of course, I understand that the economic potential of two billion barrels of recoverable oil or up to five trillion cubic feet of natural gas is huge. That represents twice the size of the Hibernia project, off the east coast of Newfoundland. Corridor Resources has been extremely patient, in waiting for Old Harry to get up and running, while Quebec and Newfoundland discussed their respective territorial limits, and therefore their rights to petroleum royalties. A stream of oil revenues from a project of this scale would be very welcome for politicians, who have to manage government finances at a time of world economic woes, a declining tax base and rising government debt.

The Old Harry oil field, 450m below the surface, has twice the reserves of the Hibernia project

But the situation has changed, since the Gulf of Mexico disaster. For one thing, British Petroleum’s assurances that it had complete control of wellhead technologies and could stop any leak have proven completely unfounded. And BP is the world’s fourth-largest company, with 2009 revenues of US$246 billion. BP has developed some of the world’s most advanced offshore drilling and exploitation technologies, and went through a public relations remake several years ago, touting itself as a green company. That hasn’t helped it much.

Corridor Resources, on the other hand, is a junior oil company with limited resources and technology. Its 2009 revenues were just $48 million – or around $1 for every $5125 in revenue that BP made. It is hard to imagine how Corridor, if faced with a sunken oil platform and uncontrollable leak of oil from a wellhead 450 metres below the surface in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, could do a better job putting a stop to it than BP has done in the Gulf of Mexico.

We should learn from the Deepwater Horizon disaster

The Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, commented recently that an accident like the Deepwater Horizon disaster simply couldn’t happen in Canada. To put it simply, Mr. Harper is in a state of denial. The weather in the Gulf of St. Lawrence can be extreme, in summer and in winter. Whereas the Gulf of Mexico basin stretches across 1.6 million km², the Gulf of St. Lawrence is considerably smaller, at 250,000  km². It is sometimes described as the world’s largest estuary and an inland sea – but it is actually more like a great salt-water lake. There are only two narrow outlets to the sea – the Straits of Belle Isle and Cabot.

This map shows the location of Old Harry

A major oil spill at Old Harry would be contained within the Gulf of St. Lawrence, sloshing back and forth without being dispersed at sea. This would make the disaster potentially even more destructive. Many species of fauna and flora would be adversely affected by an oil spill, such as whales, fish, birds and not least of all human beings. Whales will already be affected by the seismic campaign Corridor Resources plans to launch this summer.

The actions of British Petroleum are leading to criminal investigations in the United States. President Obama has several times referred to the Deepwater Horizon accident as the worst environmental disaster in American history. Unfortunately, the moratorium on offshore drilling in the United States was overturned by a New Orleans judge recently.

As long as we don’t know for sure why the Deepwater Horizon occurred, as long as the ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico continues to spin out of control, it doesn’t make any sense at all to push ahead with drilling at the Old Harry field in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. We need a full public inquiry in Canada about offshore drilling.

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Humpback songs (in the public domain)

The future of many species – such as humpback whales – is at stake