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Nova Scotia and Feds kill offshore gas for good

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7 minute read

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Brian Zinchuk

Nova Scotia and the feds kill an offshore gas project, while their bills are paid by Alberta and Saskatchewan oil and gas

Well, isn’t that just peachy? Nova Scotia’s Progressive Conservative government teamed up with the federal Liberal government to put a bullet in the head of the province’s natural gas industry, whose body was apparently still twitching, despite having been thought dead since 2018.

On December 4, Tory Rushton, Nova Scotia Minister of Natural Resources and Renewables, and Jonathan Wilkinson, federal Minister of Energy and Natural Resources issued a joint statement overruling approval of the offshore regulator, Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board.

The dollar figure, so far, wasn’t much, just $1.5 million work expenditure bid for the now dead exploration license. But if successful, the company in question, Inceptio Limited, could have maybe, just maybe, revived the offshore gas industry in Nova Scotia.

According to the regulator, there were two bids for eight parcels in the Sable Island area, only one of which was satisfactory. To be clear – the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board was apparently seeking bids for development. As in, they actually wanted companies to come and develop these natural gas resources.

But I’ll bet my reporter’s fedora someone realized it didn’t look good for Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault speaking at COP28 in Dubai about how Canada would be eliminating venting and flaring, while his partner in crime Wilkinson had it in his power to kill off a new methane (natural gas) project in an area that had been purged of the demon gas industry.

No sir. That could not stand. Thus, the announcement killing the Nova Scotia exploration project on the same day as the announcement of the venting and flaring ban. (Saskatchewan calls that a “production cap by default”)

The message is clear to industry – no more new projects if the feds can stop them.

It was very clear in the joint ministerial statement that no more gas projects will be approved, so stop trying.

The ministers overrode the board, saying, “We recognize the expertise of the board and want to reiterate our confidence in the regulatory process that it undertook. However, we both agree that this decision must also account for broader policy considerations, including our shared commitments to advance clean energy and pursue economic opportunities in the clean energy sector, which are beyond the scope of the board’s regulatory purview. This decision will enable us to research and understand the interactions between the two industries as we transition to our clean energy future.

“Leveraging the experience of the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board as a world class regulator, Canada and Nova Scotia are actively pursuing the establishment of a joint regulatory regime for offshore renewable energy by amending the Atlantic Accord Acts to expand the board’s mandate so that it can regulate and enable the development of an offshore wind sector in Nova Scotia.

“This will ensure that Nova Scotians can seize the economic benefits associated with the energy transition, including the projected $1-trillion global market opportunity for offshore wind.”

In other words, there’s no future in oil or gas for you, so now you’re going to regulate offshore wind.

Never mind that just a little further down the coast, offshore wind projects are dying off. Never mind that offshore developers are in dire fiscal straits, with billions in losses. Expect the “Offshore Petroleum Board” to get a new name in the coming days.

And shame on the Conservative government of Nova Scotia for going along with this. While the governments of Saskatchewan and Alberta are standing their ground, reasserting control over natural resources, the Nova Scotia Conservatives went along with this travesty.

It’s pretty easy to do, if you don’t have to pay your own bills with your own resources. After all, Nova Scotia gets a huge chunk of its budget from the federal equalization program.

Here’s what Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland wrote to Saskatchewan Deputy Premier and Finance Minister Donna Harpauer in the most recent round of equalization payments:

“In accordance with the legislated formula under the Act and its regulations, your province does not qualify for an Equalization payment for 2023-24.”

Alberta, which has a massive oil and natural gas industry, was similarly stiffed.

And here’s what Freeland wrote to Nova Scotia Minister of Finance Allan MacMaster:

“In accordance with the legislated formula under the Act and its regulations, your province’s Equalization payment for 2023-24 will be $2,802.8 million.”

Alberta and Saskatchewan pay into equalization, largely with money from oil and gas, but Nova Scotia will continue to draw $2.8 billion from it, bit not develop their own natural gas resources.

Nova Scotia’s hospitals are still being paid for by natural gas, except that it’s Alberta and Saskatchewan’s gas, not their own.

Pretty peachy, indeed.

Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online, and occasional contributor to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He can be reached at [email protected].

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2025 Federal Election

Mark Carney Wants You to Forget He Clearly Opposes the Development and Export of Canada’s Natural Resources

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From Energy Now

At COP26, Mark Carney also said that he thinks “we have both far far too many fossil fuels in the world” and “as much as half of oil reserves, proven oil reserves need to stay in the ground” climate goals.

Mark Carney claims that he supports Canada’s oil and gas industry and wants to see Canada export more of our natural resources. But Carney is yet again lying.

If Carney was sincere, he would immediately commit to the full repeal of the Liberals’ C-69, the ‘No More Pipelines’ Act, C-48, the West Coast Tanker Ban, and the production cap. Instead he doubled down on capping Canadian energy production.

But it’s not just that, Mark Carney has a clear history of opposing Canadian energy and infrastructure projects in favour of his radical anti-energy ideology and his goal of shutting down Canadian energy production.

However, while deliberately fighting against Canadian energy, this high flying hypocrite was having his company, Brookfield Asset Management, invest in some of the largest global pipeline projects in Brazil and the United Arab Emirates.

When asked by Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre at an Industry Committee meeting, if he supported Justin Trudeau’s decision to veto the Northern Gateway pipeline, Mark Carney said “given both environmental and commercial reasons … I think it’s the right decision.”

Then, just six months later at COP26, Mark Carney also said that he thinks “we have both far far too many fossil fuels in the world” and “as much as half of oil reserves, proven oil reserves need to stay in the ground” climate goals.

If this wasn’t enough Mark Carney has now teamed up with Trudeau’s radical anti-energy ministers to finish off Canada’s energy sector, a goal that he has outlined while attending a World Economic Forum event in Davos.

Starting with the radical, self-proclaimed socialist, Steven Guilbeault, who’s history of anti-energy and infrastructure policies is all too familiar to Canadians.

Mark Carney has enabled Steven Guilbeault to do even more damage by promoting him to his Quebec Lieutenant, giving him three new ministerial responsibilities so he can continue his climate crusade against Canadian energy and infrastructure projects.

Canadians remember when Guilbeault said that “I disagree with the [Trans Mountain] pipeline” and that “Canada shouldn’t be investing in new infrastructure for fossil fuels.”

They also remember when he proudly proclaimed that “Our government has made the decision to stop investing in new road infrastructure.” All from a minister who shamed Canadians for owning cars.

Then there is the pipeline hating Jonathan Wilkinson, who Carney appointed as Canada’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources. Recently, Wilkinson wrote a scathing letter to Canada’s energy leaders for their opposition to the Carney-Trudeau Liberals production cap on Canadian oil and gas.

Despite Canadian industries being subject to unjustified tariffs from the United States, Jonathan Wilkinson recently told reporters that “Everybody’s sort of running around saying, ‘Oh my God, we need a new pipeline, we need a new pipeline.’ The question is, well, why do we need a new pipeline?”

Finally, there is Carney’s new Minister of Environment and Climate Change Terry Duguid.  Duguid has doubled down on Mark Carney’s climate radicalism by stating that “a Mark Carney government will maintain the cap on emissions from the production of oil and gas”.

From 2015 to 2021 Carney-Trudeau environmental and anti-industry policies have cancelled over $176 billion in Canadian energy projects, with many more being cancelled afterwards. That means $176 billion worth of jobs and powerful paycheques have been blocked from Canadians so Mark Carney and his Ministers can impose their radical net zero ideology.

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2025 Federal Election

Canada’s pipeline builders ready to get to work

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From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Deborah Jaremko

“We’re focusing on the opportunity that Canada has, perhaps even the obligation”

It was not a call he wanted to make.

In October 2017, Kevin O’Donnell, then chief financial officer of Nisku, Alta.-based Banister Pipelines, got final word that the $16-billion Energy East pipeline was cancelled.

It was his job to pass the news down the line to reach workers who were already in the field.

“We had a crew that was working along the current TC Energy line that was ready for conversion up in Thunder Bay,” said O’Donnell, who is now executive director of the Mississauga, Ont.-based Pipe Line Contractors Association of Canada (PLCAC).

“I took the call, and they said abandon right now. Button up and abandon right now.

“It was truly surreal. It’s tough to tell your foreman, who then tells their lead hands and then you inform the unions that those three or four or five million man-hours that you expected are not going to come to fruition,” he said.

Workers guide a piece of pipe along the Trans Mountain expansion route. Photograph courtesy Trans Mountain Corporation

“They’ve got to find lesser-paying jobs where they’re not honing their craft in the pipeline sector. You’re not making the money; you’re not getting the health and dental coverage that you were getting before.”

O’Donnell estimates that PLCAC represents about 500,000 workers across Canada through the unions it works with.

With the recent completion of the Trans Mountain expansion and Coastal GasLink pipelines – and no big projects like them coming on the books – many are once again out of a job, he said.

It’s frustrating given that this could be what he called a “golden age” for building major energy infrastructure in Canada.

Together, more than 62,000 people were hired to build the Trans Mountain expansion and Coastal GasLink projects, according to company reports.

O’Donnell is particularly interested in a project like Energy East, which would link oil produced in Alberta to consumers in Eastern and Atlantic Canada, then international markets in the offshore beyond.

“I think Energy East or something similar has to happen for millions of reasons,” he said.

“The world’s demanding it. We’ve got the craft [workers], we’ve got the iron ore and we’ve got the steel. We’re talking about a nation where the workers in every province could benefit. They’re ready to build it.”

The “Golden Weld” marked mechanical completion of construction of the Trans Mountain Expansion Project on April 11, 2024. Photo courtesy Trans Mountain Corporation

That eagerness is shared by the Progressive Contractors Association of Canada (PCA), which represents about 170 construction and maintenance employers across the country.

The PCA’s newly launched “Let’s Get Building” advocacy campaign urges all parties in the Canadian federal election run to focus on getting major projects built.

“We’re focusing on the opportunity that Canada has, perhaps even the obligation,” said PCA chief executive Paul de Jong.

“Most of the companies are quite busy irrespective of the pipeline issue right now. But looking at the long term, there’s predictability and long-term strategy that they see missing.”

Top of mind is Ottawa’s Impact Assessment Act (IAA), he said, the federal law that assesses major national projects like pipelines and highways.

In 2023, the Supreme Court of Canada found that the IAA broke the rules of the Canadian constitution.

Construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. Photograph courtesy Coastal GasLink

The court found unconstitutional components including federal overreach into the decision of whether a project requires an impact assessment and whether a project gets final approval to proceed.

Ottawa amended the act in the spring of 2024, but Alberta’s government found the changes didn’t fix the issues and in November launched a new legal challenge against it.

“We’d like to see the next federal administration substantially revisit the Impact Assessment Act,” de Jong said.

“The sooner these nation-building projects get underway, the sooner Canadians reap the rewards through new trading partnerships, good jobs and a more stable economy.”

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