At the Canadian Institute’s Atlantic Gas Symposium held on 20 July 2004 in Halifax, AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley was invited to give a major address on opportunities in the offshore oil and gas industry on the east coast. He took advantage of the opportunity to offer a major diagnosis of the ills that dog the industry, including a poor regulatory regime, a hostile political climate, unreasonable expectations of the industry and a growing sense that exploration, particularly off Nova Scotia, is too risky and expensive. He drew attention to the crucial factors that will determine everything about the industry’s future: whether more resource is being discovered and whether the region is cost-competitive with competing basins if resource is discovered. Attempts to extort short term industrial benefits out of the industry at this early stage in its development will almost surely kill the goose that could yet lay the region’s golden eggs. Yet creating a friendlier and more efficient regulatory and political climate would go some way to increasing the chances that the industry’s potential will be realised in a long-term and sustainable way.

To read “What Real Offshore Benefits Would Look Like and How to Get Them”, click here.