It was only a couple of months ago that the news hit Newfoundland that (another) offshore project was to be “deferred indefinitely,” which is as close to saying “completely off the table” as any corporate announcement is likely to. The roughly $7-billion Bay du Nord project was to be something of a milestone, the first “deep water” oilfield, operating 500 kilometres offshore and 1,200 metres below the Atlantic surface. But with COVID-19 and the other forces ransacking the Newfoundland economy, it’s gone.
It joins the suspension of the West White Rose oil project and the drilling shutdown of Hibernia — to put it in quick terms, the offshore is virtually closed. As was expressed to me by a worker in the industry, “Newfoundland is about to fall off a cliff and the only thing that has a chance of preventing that from happening is the province’s offshore oil and gas industry.” Some $4 billion that has already been invested over the past few years is now a possible loss, staff from half the companies are laid off, and almost all have reduced revenues.
Couple that with a consideration everyone is familiar with — the collapse out West meant the end of thousands and thousands of high-paying jobs for Newfoundland workers — and you have a dismal situation.
It is not to be expected in the tumult of huge news — COVID and Canada’s economic shutdown during the plague, the protests and riots in the States — that a crisis in Newfoundland will get much air, broadcast or other. But it is a crisis as deep as the province has seen. Naturally, there have been in recent days calls to Ottawa for help, but in the flood of spending already loosed, and in what I expect is the endless series of requests from groups, towns, cities and other industries, as I’ve written in an earlier column, there is very little, if any, likelihood that anything more than token response can be expected.
[Interesting Read]
