Brief Overview of this Article:
In this article, it is revealed that the regulations in Canada for offshore drilling are poorer than the ones in the United States. As a result, Canada runs into a huge risk of experiencing the same environmental disaster occuring in the Gulf of Mexico.
Walkom: Threat of oil spill disaster worse in Canada
By: Thomas Walkom
National Affairs Columnist
For Canada, the lessons from the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster are bleak.
The United States may have stumbled into the worst ecological disaster in its history. But we have deliberately chosen to head in the same direction.
American regulation of the offshore oil industry has been revealed as a sham. Our regulation of drilling in the far harsher North Atlantic and Arctic is said by experts to be even weaker.
And thanks to what is in effect a conspiracy between the governing Conservatives and opposition Liberals to avoid an early election, Canada’s environmental rules are about to be further gutted.
No one is innocent. The Newfoundland government strongly supports Chevron’s drilling in the stormy Orphan basin, some 450 kilometres into the North Atlantic, even though a spill there would be almost impossible to contain. The reason? Premier Danny Williams thirsts after the tax revenues that big oil generates.
A review panel of the Inuit-dominated government of Nunavut supports seismic testing to locate offshore oil in the Eastern Arctic for the same reason.
A Liberal government under Paul Martin relaxed the rules for Arctic oil exploration. A Conservative government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper is easing the rules even more.
There is no mystery as to what drives this. Oil is the new gold; the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea is the new El Dorado. Harper’s much vaunted northern initiative, which has seen the entire cabinet travelling to Baffin Island, is not about abstract issues of sovereignty; it is about oil.
Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the Gulf spill is what it has revealed about the relative clout of governments and big oil. In spite of U.S. President Barack Obama’s bluster, British Petroleum is still in charge of handling the oil leak it helped to create.
That’s not because BP is doing a good job; rather, it is because the U.S. government — BP’s ostensible regulator — has so little expertise in offshore drilling that it would do even worse.
The tendency of regulators to become captives of the firms they oversee is well-known. Think of the CRTC’s willingness to approve virtually every fee increase the telephone and cable firms demand.
But oil regulators make the CRTC seem fiercely independent. Until the Gulf spill occurred, Ottawa’s National Energy Board appeared poised to give Arctic drillers – including BP – an exemption from crucial environmental safety rules, simply because they found them inconvenient.
But with oil washing up on the Louisiana coastline, politicians across North America are ducking for cover. Obama has declared a moratorium on Arctic oil exploration. Canada’s NEB has launched what it calls a full review of Arctic drilling. Harper insists that his government is putting the environment first.
None of this is expected to last long. Obama’s moratorium is due to be lifted next year. Canada’s federal government is quietly pushing ahead with plans to give the oil industry a double boost — first by giving the more pliant NEB sole responsibility for the environmental assessment of Arctic oil proposals; second by letting the cabinet exempt some projects from scrutiny altogether.
The opposition Liberals, desperate to avoid an election they might lose, are refusing to block either.
The politicians and their oil friends calculate — probably correctly — that a year from now the Gulf spill will be forgotten, the media will again be focused on Tiger Woods’ sex life and few will be paying attention to who regulates what in the Beaufort Sea.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/arctic/article/816083--walkom-threat-of-oil-spill-disaster-worse-in-canada
June 6, 2010 at 10:41 AM
“Man learns from history that man learns nothing from history.” I think that this famous statement models perfectly the situation Canada is currently in. Though we are constantly hearing the major ecological damage the BP oil spill is causing in the Gulf of Mexico, the Canadian government is taking minimum action to ensure that such an environmental disaster does not occur in Canada. By making a diminutive effort to stop a tragic oil spill, we are bound to encounter an environment-damaging oil spill in the future.
To prevent an oil spill, I believe that there is a need for the gradual transition into renewable energy sources. Though oil is very important to our economy and our life style in that it provides jobs for Canadians and energy for us to power electrical appliances that we have become accustomed to, I think that securing our environment is important too. Despite some people’s belief that it is not possible to achieve a competitive economy while maintaining a healthy environment, I think it is possible if we slowly start using renewable energy sources.
Using renewable energy sources has a variety of benefits that will help shelter our economy and our environment. Using renewable energy sources means that we are encouraging companies to harvest unlimited resources for energy. An example of an renewable energy source is solar power. Solar power is favourable for our environment because the energy source itself and the process of converting it into electricity is environmentally-friendly. This shows that by practicing the use of renewable energy, it is possible to reduce pollution since the extraction of the resource and the conversion of the resource into electricity is environmentally friendly. Furthermore, practicing the use of renewable energy sources will create more jobs for our economy. For example, to use wind turbines to harvest energy, it is a necessary that someone builds the wind turbines. This shows that in order to use renewable energy sources, we will need to employ people to manufacture the required equipment. Through renewable energy, it is possible to allow our economy to stay competitive in the global market while protecting our environment.
I chose this article because I think it shows us how reliant and dependent we have become on the use of oil that our government feels it is necessary to continue to seek it even though it is very unpleasant for environment and there are other possible solutions to seek energy. Moreover, this shows a correspondence between the government decisions and how their impact will affect our lives and the economy.
June 6, 2010 at 7:26 PM
I think that all of the world has become to obsessed with oil. Without it we have no life. We use it for cars, energy etc. I think to present another oil spill they should take more time at the ridges and hire a well trained staff to do the ridges. I think this made a lot of people realize how dangerous oil can be. I think this will make oil sales go down a small amount because people are scared of this happening again. In conclusion I think we could live with a little less oil.