Introduction
I have actively participated in the review of the BC offshore oil and gas moratorium review process. First, I participated in the Royal Society of Canada’s expert panel deliberations in Vancouver over a six-day period in October, 2003. Subsequently, I participated in the federal moratorium public consultation process, first through my appearance at the Victoria preliminary hearing in the spring of 2004, later at the Victoria coastal community session on May 13, and lastly by submitting a written brief to the Panel. In my written submission my argument was essentially that the probability and consequences of oil spills, including the serious limitations of existing technology in extreme environments, was sufficient reason to leave the moratorium intact.
I have also had a chance to review some of the oral testimony and many of the submissions of other interveners, via the www.moratoriumpublicreview.ca website, as well as through the Victoria Public library. From all that I have heard and read, two quotes sum up the dichotomy over the highly-charged issue as to whether to maintain or lift the moratorium. The first of these comes from Dr. Chris Campbell, in his written submission to the panel. On page one of his brief, Dr. Campbell states:
“I cannot accept that public concern or lack of information, over issues that have been frequently and extensively analysed in the international environmental assessment experience with offshore exploration, can be used as an argument to maintain the moratorium”.
Contrast this statement with that of Dr. Rod Dobell, on page nine of his written submission, dated May 25, 2004:
“In a democracy, people have the right to say that they do not wish to see development in a certain place even though all the science of the day asserts that doing so is almost riskless. They may say they do not wish to accept certain risks, despite all the assurances of sound scientists that the risks are absolutlely low, or low relative to all kinds of other every day risks. It is the preferences of the community, not the soundness of the science, that should inform the advice from this Panel.”
I would agree with Dr. Dobell that the public does have right to decide on this issue. However, I would not frame the debate as a clash between the public and science. On the contrary - I believe that a convincing scientific ( and technological ) case can be made for maintaining the moratorium, and I believe I made it in my own presentation and submission to the panel. This is not a case of most lay people wanting to keep the ban in place, and most scientists believing there are no scientific impediments to lifting it. It may look that way at first glance, but when one takes into account the fact that science, and scientists, have a vested interest in seeing the moratorium lifted, then one starts to question the conventional scientific scientific wisdom.
The public’s desire to maintain the moratorium is not so much a political decision as a consequence of science’s utter failure to convince the public that offshore oil and gas exploration and development can be done safely. It is not an ‘anti-science’ stance so much as the application of a higher standard or level of caution than scientists are prepared to impose. Scientists, for instance, cannot guarantee there will never be a catastrophic spill with disastrous consequences. All they can really say is that they will do their darndest to prevent one from happening. For the public, however, this is simply not good enough; they hold the Queen Charlottes in very high regard; it is part of their consciousness; it helps to define who they are as British Columbians, and they don’t want to risk losing it. And scientists, as my May submission underlined, have said that they may in fact lose it, since the consequences of a major spill could be catastrophic and irreversible.
People are not stupid. The three people who testified before me at the first evening of hearings in Victoria, for instance, were all very articulate and passionate in their defence of the moratorium. The first was a poet. She was followed by a photographer/sailor. Next, there was a retired preacher who had spent several years among the Haida. Are all of these presenters to be dismissed because their views are ‘unscientific’, or do they perhaps enunciate a valid, if untutored unease about offshore oil and gas activity in this otherwise pristine, wild, remote location? I think the latter.
The offshore oil industry, and their coterie of scientists and engineers, tell us that they can operate safely virtually anywhere in the world. What they are really saying is that although they cannot guarantee a major, catastrophic spill, they feel the risks are manageable. That’s partly, no doubt, because they have a greater tolerance of risk than does the general public. The public’s attitude can best be summed up thus: “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you must”. One can, after all, drill for oil in the Galapagos Islands, or on the Great Barrier Reef, or even in Victoria’s Inner Harbour, just outside the Empress Hotel. If it’s safe, then why not? Shell Oil has a policy of “If we can’t do it safely then we won’t do it at all!” But, how safe is safe, and who determines whether it is safe?
Before getting into what the majority of the public fears, rightly in my view, let us analyse the written submissions to the panel, which the panel reluctantly agreed, under pressure from certain interveners, myself included, to give equal weight to alongside the oral testimony. I have no way of knowing for certain whether the oral testimony leans towards lifting as opposed to maintaining the moratorium. Nor do I know for sure whether the written testimony leans in a similar direction. All I can do is rely on the statistics generated from a database maintained by the Pacific Offshore Energy Association (POEA). The POEA searchable database analyses a total of 1731 briefs to the federal panel. What does an analysis of the POEA web-based database tell us?; the results are very instructive.
If the POEA database is accurate, then what emerges is a yawning gap between the Lower Mainland and Victoria on the one hand, and northern communities such as Port Hardy and Prince Rupert on the other hand. Nowhere is this more accentuated than in Victoria, where out of 222 people who wrote the panel, only 30 want the moratorium lifted. By contrast, in Prince Rupert, of 57 who took the trouble to write, 49 want it lifted. The one major exception to this north-south dichotomy is Queen Charlotte City, where 12 people wrote to say they want the moratorium maintained, and only one person wants it lifted. In other words, by and large, to no one’s surprise, big city, southern folk tend to want to keep the ban in place, whereas largely non-native northerners want to lift it because of the promise of jobs, etc. But, there is also another split on another level, this time being the business/corporate community on the one hand, and the academic ( professors/students ) community on the other.
In terms of the business community, 62 are in favour of lifting the moratorium, while 18 are against. The corporate sector shows an even wider split: 10 want to lift it, and nobody wants to maintain it. Of the academics, however, the situation is reversed: 59 are against lifting, and only 7 in favour of maintaining.
Of those who submitted who are categorised as “Private Individuals”, 900 are said to be against lifting, and 476 in favour. In other words, individuals are almost two to one in favour of keeping the ban in place. By any standards, this is quite a significant margin.
All tolled, POEA’s database indicates that 59.4% of those who submitted briefs want the moratorium kept in place, whereas 39.7% want it lifted. In other words, there is basically a 60-40 split in favour of maintaining the moratorium. No one is saying that these results represent an opinion poll; instead, these figures simply reflect the weight of opinion of those who took the time to write and submit a brief. Do the numbers suggest that most coastal BCers are in favour of keeping the moratorium? The answer is no. In fact, it is quite possible that the opposite is the case. But, if it is, what would explain the ‘victory’ of those who want to maintain the moratorium? Are they more organised than the other camp, or just more motivated to get involved because they feel very passionate about this issue? Who is to say that people from northern communities looking for jobs are any less motivated? These people may be just as passionate, their only ‘handicap’ being that less people live in the north than in the Lower Mainland and on southern Vancouver Island.
How is the panel to react to these statistics? Is it bound to follow the will of the majority? If so, which majority - the majority of people who submitted, or the majority of northerners, perhaps, or businesses, or academics, for that matter? Moreover, what kind of relative weighting is the panel to give to the various ‘communities’ of interveners? Is, for instance, the input of the business community more significant than that of the academic community? Is there any way the panel could somehow overrule the weight of public submissions in favour of keeping the moratorium, without entirely losing its credibility in the court of public opinion? If there is such a way, what would it look like? Could the panel simply say, for instance, that while 6 out of 10 people want to keep the ban in place, the most factual and knowledgeable briefs tended to come from those wanting to lift the ban? To return to Dr. Dobell’s point, do the public’s suspicions about the threats of offshore oil and gas have to be valid, or grounded in science, to be taken seriously?
The issue as to how the panel evaluates the oral testimony and written briefs. This is a question that came up at the preliminary Victoria hearing
Is the area unique?
Dr. Campbell would prefer to have the moratorium lifted first, and then have an informed discussion of environmental issues as part of the environmental assessment process that would follow. My concern is that lifting the moratorium represents the thin edge of the wedge; it puts us on a slippery slope towards exploration and, should oil be discovered, eventual production and transport. For, the history of such an incremental, staged approvals processes here and elsewhere is one where the momentum is invariably towards approving applications for seismic exploration, drilling and production, as the case may be. Challenges tend to be viewed from an engineering perspective, where checklists are followed and signed off on. Thus, in the case of an oil spill response plan, a project might be approved provided the operator had such a plan, whether or not the plan could actually be executed much of the time.
Dr. Campbell also claims that “…there is no unique feature to the Pacific Coast environment that has not been in the development of offshore technology and operational approaches in some part of the world.” This may or may not be true, but it betrays the fact that the Queen Charlotte Basin is still unique, and what makes it unique is the specific set of circumstances that characterise it. These can be summarised as follows:
In other words, our Basin may not have the worst storms, the highest waves or the strongest winds, but the combination of these and other factors in their extreme form makes it a very dangerous place in which to operate.
Also, projections for global climate change are for conditions such as these to get worse over the course of the next twenty years or more; thus, one can expect more extreme events, which are more severe, i.e. involving stronger winds, more frequent storms, higher waves, etc. Can one really expect the offshore engineers to meet all these challenges thrust at them? Is it just a question of ‘over-engineering’ ad infinitum; somehow I think not. For, the fact of the matter is that whenever one is operating in extreme environments, the chances of something going wrong increase.
I also take issue with Dr. Campbell’s assertion that the offshore oil and gas industry is characterised by continuous improvement and risk reduction practices. For, while it is true that the record on oil spills has improved dramatically in the course of the past thirty years or so, history shows that these things tend to go in waves or cycles, and that progress is not linear; regulations are strengthened, then relaxed, partly in response to industry pressure, on marginal projects, for instance, and partly in response to a change in government or regulatory approach or energy policy. Existing regulations, which is what the public review panel is supposed to be examining, are too weak, at least at the provincial level, where ‘fast- tracking environmental assessment and streamlining are the order of the day. Nor should we assume, as Hall did, that best practices and stringent environmental regulations will be put in place; in fact, for planning purposes, we should assume the opposite, namely that the worst government, the worst operator and the worst practices will be in place. We should look at what the likely outcomes are if all these factors are in place.
i.
The Strong Report reveals its own bias when it says the pre-cautionary principle was meant for safety (?) but not to prevent progress. Is offshore oil and gas progress? Is an oil spill on the scale of the EVOS or Prestige progress, or just the price we pay for so-called ‘progress’? If offshore oil is progress, tell that to Americans, in whose country 70% of the outer continental shelf is off limits to oil and gas. Tell it to Alaskans, where a moratorium is in effect in Bristol Bay. Tell it to the Norwegians, where the oilpatch is excluded from the Lofoten Islands, which, like BC’s North Coast, is characterised by its scenic beauty, fjords and importance of both tourism and fishing to the local economy.
The issue before BCers is essentially this: are the benefits of offshore oil and gas worth the risks? Put another way, is it worth risking a $500 million Inside Passage cruise industry, and a fish and seafood industry that contributes well over one billion dollars per year to the BC economy. For, experience from other spills such as the 2002 Prestige spill off the coast of Spain demonstrate that just the hint of a major spill will lead suppliers to boycott all fish products from the general area around a spill, whether or not the fish is tainted. On top of this, the BC government could be on the hook for hundreds of million in cleanup and or compensation costs in the event of a spill of the magnitude of the Exxon Valdez. In short, the offshore benefits of offshore oil and gas, such as royalties to the province are often touted, but for some inexplicable reason the other side of the equation – the potential economic loss, is overlooked. Thus, BCers should think twice before they ‘roll the dice’. And, if they want to ‘win’ something, they also have to be prepared to lose it all, as I pointed out in my testimony. In my humble opinion, offshore oil and gas is not worth the risk, on either economic or environmental grounds.