Amid preparations for spring public hearings, a British Columbia government eager to capitalize on strong natural gas markets has put out a reminder that a formula has already been found once for opening up the West Coast of Canada to offshore drilling.

The BC Offshore Oil and Gas Team, a provincial agency set up by the Liberal administration in Victoria to further its vow to foster an active drilling frontier by 2010, dusted off a favorable 1986 report of an inquiry into ending a moratorium against industrial activity off Canada’s Pacific coastline.

After a three-year canvass of the same issues faced by the new review, the expert panel that wrote the 1986 report concluded that the region requires safeguards rather than outright prohibition against gas exploration and development. Recommended precautions included an exclusion zone of 20 kilometers (12 miles) along the coast, a summer-only drilling season, a specialized environmental watchdog agency and a government-run compensation fund as insurance against industrial accidents.

Work by BC and federal authorities on implementing the formula was aborted in 1989 as a Canadian result of the 1989 wreck of the Exxon Valdez on the rocky shore of Alaska. The West Coast offshore exploration moratorium grew out of a 1972 Canadian decision to ban Alaskan oil tanker traffic from navigable channels along the BC shoreline. The 1989 spill was universally greeted as justification for the original caution, and the federal and provincial governments let the recommendations of the exploration inquiry sink with barely a ripple.

The BC offshore team put the 1986 report back into circulation to any and all with an interest in the subject while a federal inquiry, a tribunal led by former National Energy Board chairman Roland Priddle, prepared to start holding public information sessions in the spring.

With BC renowned as the touchiest Canadian jurisdiction on environmental and aboriginal-rights issues, the tribunal has been given a lengthy written mandate, studded with reminders to proceed carefully and listen to all concerned. But Priddle’s group has also been instructed to proceed with dispatch, ideally to generate some results in time to meet a target of 2005 set by the BC offshore team for creating a regulatory apparatus and resolving federal-provincial jurisdictional matters.

The exercise is being moved along through the use of a separate proceeding to hear from expert witnesses. Technical aspects of environmental issues are being reviewed by a parallel inquiry, before an official independent Science Expert. The technical review is under way as a series of workshops or seminars with professionals on subjects such as earthquakes, weather, possible industrial accidents and all the potential effects on the marine habitat and wildlife.

The federal inquiry’s mandate makes it plain that national Canadian authorities are as open as their provincial peers to ending a 30-year-old drilling ban which all concerned have acknowledged to be rooted as much in fear of offshore industry activity as in facts about it.

Priddle’s panel is instructed to be mindful of a standing national policy called the Canada Oceans Strategy. As a matter of principle, the strategy “recognizes oil and gas exploration and development as one of many legitimate ocean uses.” While the strategy emphasizes conservation and environmental protection, it also pledges the Canadian government “supports the economic diversification of coastal communities” and “provides and opportunity for all ocean users to inform the decision-making process.”

A cornerstone of the information base for all engaged in the BC offshore drilling review continues to be an appraisal of the area as rich in potential by the Geological Survey of Canada.

On the basis of limited but tantalizing results of pre-1972 seismic and drilling activity, and scientific work since, the region is projected to harbor 42 Tcf of gas and 9.8 billion barrels of oil.

While spread across three geological basins, the lion’s share of the resources are projected to be offshore of the Queen Charlotte Islands along the northern BC coast, including 26 Tcf or 62% of the gas and all the oil.

Canadian producers have held more than 20,000 square miles of resource leases offshore of BC since pre-moratorium times, with the rights still in force on paper but no ability to act on them and the lease payments suspended.

As a good-will gesture, Chevron Canada and Petro-Canada in 1997 surrendered portions of their holdings along scenic shores of the Queen Charlotte Islands earmarked for a national park. On the vast remaining prospective offshore hunting ground, the BC offshore team’s ambitious schedule calls for seismic studies to begin within two years.

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