NS and the Georges Banks

NS: Province in hot seat over Georges Bank moratorium
By Tina Comeau, Transcontinental Media

Source: The Sou'wester, April 26, 2010

[YARMOUTH, NS] — With the Nova Scotia government needing to make a decision by June 1 on whether to extend the drilling moratorium that exists on Georges Bank, many people are growing impatient and want to know what the government intends to do.

Last week Digby-Annapolis MLA and Liberal fisheries critic Harold Jr. Theriault asked the NDP government to come clean on its policy for drilling on Georges Bank.

“I’ve been asking Minister (Sterling) Belliveau since last fall what his government’s position is on the issue and I’ve never gotten an answer. There’s no need to wait five weeks to tell Nova Scotians. Just do the right thing and extend the moratorium on Georges Bank past 2012.”

The year 2012 is when the moratorium — in place since June 1999 — is slated to end.

“Before taking government (the NDP) opposed any drilling on Georges Bank,” said Theriault. “Now it appears that the NDP are seriously thinking about allowing rigs on Georges Bank.”


File Map - The Sou'wester

Cape Breton North MLA Cecil Clarke has called on the government to convene a panel that will examine the moratorium that is set to expire in 32 months. He said it is important to ensure enough time is allocated for a comprehensive review. The original panel took almost three years to render its decision.

“We want to see due diligence in ensuring both industry and environmental concerns are considered in this matter,” Clarke said.

But others say another wake-up call to government is right before their eyes. Those in the fishing industry and others who are opposed to ending the moratorium say that just hours after Nova Scotia Fisheries and Environment Minister Sterling Belliveau told legislative colleagues that modern-day technology makes an oil rig accident “very unlikely,” a huge explosion ripped through a state-of-the-art drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The blast injured 13 men and news sources were reporting that 300,000 barrels of crude oil is leaking, per day, into the sea. Eleven other people were thrown into the sea during the explosion and presumed dead.

“We are sickened by the sight of the massive blaze, the spilling of possibly millions of liters of oil into the ocean and the terrible loss of life in the Gulf,” said Judith Maxwell of the Scotia Fundy Inshore Fisherman’s Association. “But we are just as sickened by the thought that this government would turn their backs on clear promises to protect Georges Bank and take a huge risk on oil or gas rigs there just for the glimmer of hope of what they may glean in royalties many years later.”

In the United States, President Barack Obama recently named Georges Bank off limits to oil and gas development.