A handful of protesters from Sum of Us, Greenpeace, the Ecology Action Centre and the Clean Ocean Action Committee delivered a massive, 233,000-signature petition to the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board (CNSOPB) on Wednesday, opposing what they say are extremely lax safety standards around Shell's drilling program. Currently, if a subsea oil well blowout were to occur, the company would be allowed to take 12 to 13 days to contain it. Shell's original proposal suggested it could take 21 days to get a capping stack to the site.
"It looks like Shell is getting a free pass at Nova Scotia's expense," said Rosa Kouri, Canadian campaigns director for Sum of Us. "We have a multi-billion-dollar, well-regulated and fully sustainable fishery which is being put at unnecessary risk and a quarter-million people think this is totally unacceptable."
While presenting the CNSOPB with the petition, protesters wielded signs with large numbers on them representing the length of time Shell is allowed to spill oil in the water, and the number of signatures on the petition.
Shell plans to drill two exploratory wells 250 kilometres off the south shore of Nova Scotia. The first phase of the program is expected to last 10 or 11 months. For the work, Shell has contracted the Stena IceMAX, a mobile offshore drilling unit.
Shell has six exploration licences in the region. It plans to spend $1 billion in the first six years of the nine-year licence period and substantially more if the first exploratory well yields hydrocarbons.
"You have to take into account the probability of having a blowout is extremely low," Stuart Pinks, CEO of CNSOPB, told National Observer.
"Our determination at the end was all reasonable precautions to protect safety and the environment had been taken, which is a requirement of the legislation and the regulations.”
Groups opposed to the drilling maintain that U.S. regulators require oil companies to have blowout capping equipment on site within 24 hours. But in a presentation to the Nova Scotia legislature's Standing Committee on Resources on November 5, Shell claimed that was inaccurate.
Christine Pagan, Atlantic Canada venture manager for Shell Canada, told the committee that for the Alaska operation the company has a custom-built capping stack that is the only one of its kind and can't be deployed anywhere else.
The capping stack for the Nova Scotia operation is maintained in Stavanger, Norway. It is one of four around the world that a consortium called Oil Spill Response Limited maintains on behalf of most of the world's major oil and gas companies.
Pagan told the committee that the capping stack requires specialized facilities, equipment and trained personnel, none of which are located in Atlantic Canada. "If we were to need it, it would be ready for loading onto a vessel as soon as we made that phone call," she said.
Scott Jardine, Shell Canada’s health, safety and environment manager, told the committee the company didn't believe the risk warranted or justified a capping stack for the Nova Scotia operation.
Source: www.nationalobserver.com
