Fracking is banned in Nova Scotia until it’s not
At this point in time the rewards outweigh the risk
Depending on which day the news dented your consciousness last week, Nova Scotia is either “happy” to entertain fracking, or the earth-shattering process is banned.
Remarkably, both statements are true.
Daily news consumers are excused if they were confused by Premier Stephen McNeil’s Wednesday-to-Thursday apparent contradictions on fracking.
He left some folks harbouring the misconception that he floated a trial balloon Wednesday, only to shoot it out of the sky Thursday. He didn’t. He’s a better politician than that.
Second term premiers planning on occupying the office for a third – Premier McNeil’s stated intention – don’t fly many trial balloons. That’s what ministers are for, and first-term premiers who survive to become secondterm premiers have learned the utility of ministers.
Plus, the premier has no need to test the political winds to see if they’ve shifted in favour of fracking. He knows they haven’t.
So why the 22-hour whiplash? Simple. There wasn’t one. The ban is on until it’s off. The contradiction was more apparent than real.
Wednesday, the premier told a business audience a simple truth. The province would happily have an onshore gas industry, provided someone other than the government does the heavy lifting.
Thursday, he doubled back to make sure any folks who were nervous about Wednesday’s statement could drift back into the blessed assurance of the ban on fracking.
The heavy lifting here isn’t cracking the planet’s crust, as hard as that must be. Rather, it’s getting people to accept the joys of little, manmade earthquakes in their neighbourhood.
At the same event where the premier said, “(if) communities decide that they’re going to give us social licence for fracking to happen, we’d be happy to join them,” he also said, “political capital is meant to be spent,” but, as his speech suggested, his government’s capital is all tied up in health and education changes.
Political capital is finite, and Stephen McNeil isn’t prepared to squander any of his trying to convince the good people of Anytown, Nova Scotia that fracking is good for them.
However, if the companies that stand to make tidy profits extracting gas from shale buried a mile deep want to try, they can fill their boots. That’s what they would have heard Wednesday, and nothing he said Thursday would change that understanding.
He set the bar high. People who study such stuff will tell you “social licence” comes in degrees, first acceptance than approval. Before his government allows fracking, the premier needs communities to want it. That’s past mere acceptance and well into approval.
Guysborough municipal council has asked for it, but the premier easily side-stepped that minor distraction. The energy department’s map shows that Guysborough doesn’t have any gas to extract.
Having delivered his messages effectively to two distinct audiences, Premier McNeil can go home for the weekend, have his cake and eat it too.
Companies interested in plumbing the depths of the Cumberland or Windsor basins for shale gas know the rules of the game. They almost certainly did before the premier let the Halifax Chamber of Commerce in on the government’s real position on fracking.
The upfront investment in shale gas extraction in Nova Scotia isn’t geological, it’s psychological. Minds set against hydraulically fracturing rock deep underground need to be changed before any money is to be made on the gas the cracked rocks release.
Folks who are comforted that fracking is off until “communities” say its on, might want to spend a little time out and about rural Nova Scotia where jobs are few and money is fleeting. The prospect of some work in the lucrative gas business can look appealing if say, blueberry prices go into the tank like they did last summer.
Social license is intangible and sometimes irrelevant. Communities will see nearby forests clear cut, without ever issuing a license, social or otherwise, that allows the landscape they look upon daily to change irredeemably. First Nations people near Shubenacadie did not give social license for Alton Gas to fill salt caverns with gas.
At least when it comes to fracking, the McNeil government is leaving the decision with people who need to weigh the relative risks and rewards. And until they are convinced the rewards outweigh the risk, fracking is banned.
Just like the premier said.
“Political capital is finite, and Stephen McNeil isn’t prepared to squander any of his trying to convince the good people of Anytown, Nova Scotia that fracking is good for them.”