CNLOPB extends deadline for feedback
Draft of strategic environmental assessment for western Newfoundland available online
The Canada Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (CNLOPB) has pushed back the due date for public comments on the board’s strategic environmental assessment for western Newfoundland.
The move also pushes back the closing date for the province’s lat- est call for bids on select offshore exploration licences in the area.
The regional environmental review was first completed in 2005.
A fresh update of the everevolving documentation was launched in 2011.
The 680-page draft assessment report is now available on the CNLOPB website and upon request.
Strategic environmental assess- ments play a role in determining whether further exploration rights are offered in a particular area offshore.
They may also identify ecologically sensitive areas within an offshore region that should be closed to oil and gas exploration and development.
The CNLOPB issued the draft for the western Newfoundland strategic environmental assess- ment (SEA) on June 21. The board set aside six weeks for followup public consultation on the draft.
According to a statement issued Friday, the close-out for public comments has been pushed further, to Friday, Sept. 27, offering an extra eight weeks for public review and feedback. Comments can be submitted by email to information@cnlopb.nl.ca.
“A key objective of the public review is to provide those who commented during the public consultations with an opportunity to assess how their comments are reflected in the draft report. Some may choose only to review the parts of the report that are relevant to their earlier comments, although the CNLOPB will welcome all feedback on the draft report,” the board’s statement reads.
The statement included no mention of exploration licence areas up for bid in Western Newfoundland, in the latest offshore land sale.
Following a presentation at a Rotary luncheon at the Sheraton Hotel in St. John’s in May, CNLOPB chairman and CEO Scott Tessier was asked if strategic environmental assessment work would negatively affect land sale bidding, considering there is some uncertainty for would-be operators from a regulatory perspective.
“No, I don’t think so. I think we’ve worked hard to incorporate enough time between the close of the SEA and the close of the call for bids,” he told reporters.
The latest offshore land sale, announced in May, includes one parcel in the Flemish Pass, four in the Carson Basin and four off the island's west coast.
The closing date for the call for bids was set at 120 days after the relevant regional strategic environmental assessment was complete.
“So that should give everybody adequate time to take into full consideration the information that’s coming forward from the SEA and incorporate that into what may happen in the bidding process,” Tessier said.
The four licences off Western Newfoundland total more than one million hectares for exploration, in an area where any drilling — or exploration or develop- ment — has come up against stiff opposition from environmental groups, concerned with the threat of an oil spill in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.