The battle lines have been drawn as Bahamas Petroleum Company’s drillship makes its way to The Bahamas for a long-planned drilling of a single exploratory oil well 90 miles from Andros more than a decade after BPC signed license agreements with The Bahamas government.
On one side are those eager to find out whether black gold lies beneath our rich seabed. Many believe it holds the solution to our deeply worrying and rapidly burgeoning national debt, which places significant pressure on a government fresh out of viable ideas for a fiscal and economic turnaround.
On the other side of this highly emotive issue are those deathly afraid of the potential risks drilling poses to our delicate marine life, and those who believe The Bahamas, a nation which faces existential threats from climate change, is alarmingly headed in the wrong direction in pursuing oil drilling.
BPC says it has spent more than $110 million preparing for this activity for 10 years.
The Minnis administration in February 2020 granted BPC an environmental authorization (EA) under the Petroleum Act 2016. The drilling of the Perseverance #1 well is scheduled to take place late this month.
But a coalition of local and international environmental groups, concerned Bahamians and local businesses, called Our Islands, Our Future, wants to block the drilling.
Yesterday, the environmental groups Waterkeeper Bahamas Ltd. and Coalition to Protect Clifton Bay (Save The Bays) applied for leave for a judicial review of the government’s decisions to authorize the drilling.
Those groups are a part of Our Islands, Our Future.
The groups believe there were certain fundamental flaws in the approvals process, including a deficient environmental impact assessment (EIA) and a lack of proper consultation at various stages, which they saymean that BPC’s approvals need to be revisited.
On November 17, the coalition’s lawyers, Callenders & Co., writing to Minister for the Environment Romauld Ferreira, declared that the decisions to grant environmental authorization and permits for the drilling of the well near the Cay Sal Bank in the southwestern waters of The Bahamas are unlawful because, among other reasons, there was a failure to consult.
The coalition’s lawyers contend there are “strong procedural grounds” to challenge the decisions owing to the absence of any or any adequate process of consultation before the decisions were taken.
“Owing to assurances given by the prime minister and by the minister of the environment, our clients had a legitimate expectation that the BPC EIA and EA would not be approved or granted,” the coalition’s lawyers also said.
They stated, “We note that it was announced by BPC in the press last month that the approved BPC EIA is currently being updated because of the COVID-19 pandemic interruptions to the exploration start-up date as a result of which BPC is proposing to use a different oil rig ship (the Stena IceMAX). Presumably the amended EIA has been or is being submitted to the DEPP (director of environmental planning and protection).”
The coalition through its lawyers also asked the minister in that November 17 letter to provide a copy of BPC’s amended environmental impact assessment and details of the proposed public consultation process in respect thereof.
In a letter on the same date, the coalition’s lawyers, writing to BPC CEO Simon Potter, said they understand that owing to the change from the original drill ship in the EIA to Stena IceMAX, a modified EIA has been submitted to the director of environmental planning and protection.
The implications of that, they said, is this amended EIA will have to be approved, a new application for EA under the Petroleum Act Regulations will need to be submitted to the minister and the EIA process is therefore not yet complete.
The coalition has asked BPC for an undertaking not to proceed with the project until such time as a full and proper public consultation process has taken place.
“I don’t understand why the executive branch of government, that is the prime minister, the ministers, the regulatory agencies, all of these entities don’t understand that Parliament has passed laws which regulate the extent of their powers,” said Fred Smith, QC, a partner at Callenders, speaking with National Review.
“And so, while they might think drilling is a wonderful idea…[and] all these heads of agreement that they sign are wonderful potential economic opportunities, both the regulatory agencies, including the prime minister and the director of physical planning and the director of environmental planning and protection and all the ministers are bound by law to respect the laws that the members of Parliament…passed. You can’t just ignore the laws that Parliament passes.”
Executive Director of Bahamas Reef Environmental Educational Foundation (BREEF) Casuarina McKinney-Lambert emphasized in a press release from the coalition that the group is only asking BPC to respect the legal process in The Bahamas.
“We have asked repeatedly to be consulted on the details of the deal, to see the drilling licenses themselves, for access to more information on BPC’s insurance coverage and the environmental sensitivity maps they have supposedly compiled. It seems appealing to the courts is the only way to achieve some transparency,” McKinney-Lambert said.
“For example, we are being asked to take their word that the company has adequate insurance. What does that even mean in this context? The Deepwater Horizon disaster took place while BP was trying to cap the exploratory well and it cost $65 billion to clean up. We find it highly unlikely that BPC has insurance coverage to that level, and if they do, why won’t they simply come out and provide proof of coverage?”
The Bahamas National Trust has also come out strongly against the planned exploration.
On October 5, it said while it understands that complex negotiations may have resulted in the government being legally bound to honor its commitment, it has “very serious concerns” about The Bahamas allowing the exploration for possible exploitation of fossil fuels.
“The economic gains from exploiting and burning fossil fuels are short-term and are ironically helping to shorten the lifespan of these islands. The BNT is extremely concerned about the impacts of climate change and the general health of the environment of The Bahamas,” it said.
Interestingly, Ferreira did not address this issue when he contributed to the budget debate in the House of Assembly in June.
In March, he said The Bahamas has a “moral obligation” to drill for oil.
The minister also said, “most people I meet are actually excited by the prospect that there may be oil”.
Public interest
In a November 30 response to the coalition’s lawyers, BPC’s attorneys at Graham Thompson said it is “plainly wrong” to suggest that the environmental authorization process should be reopened in light of the change of the drill ship being used for the project.
“The project remains that for which the EA was granted on February 25, 2020,” the attorneys said.
They added,”…The balance of convenience lies overwhelmingly in favor of BPC and the government. An injunction that BPC must suspend exploratory drilling would cause very serious prejudice to BPC.
“The injunction would also be entirely contrary to the public interest which lies in determining as speedily as possible whether The Bahamas has viable offshore oil assets.”
In addition to spending $120 million since 2007, Graham Thompson said BPC has incurred $9.1 million on the project in specific reliance on the minister’s decision of February 25, 2020.
BPC’s attorneys also said the coalition’s lawyers failed to identify any duty to consult.
“There is no general common law duty of consultation,” BPC’s attorneys stated. “You have not identified a legitimate expectation that there would be a public consultation.”
BPC’s attorneys are also taking issue with the timing of the coalition’s objections and legal threat given that the grounds for the threatened legal action arose on February 25, 2020 when the minister gave the go ahead.
Asked why the coalition did not object sooner, Smith told National Review the coalition was formed precisely to lobby against the drilling after the February decision was made.
He said, “Among other reasons, the minister of the environment promised a host of NGOs at a meeting that this government would not approve oil drilling and since then has never publicly said that they would.
“It’s only recently that BPC has been advertising that it received extensions to its licenses and that is when earlier in the year the coalition was formed and began writing letters to the minister and prime minister and received no answers, and we launched a petition and as a result of the lack of response from the government sought legal advice to try to stop it.
“Once they (the interests that eventually formed the coalition) got wind that this thing was going to happen they started lobbying.”
BPC’s attorneys said these drilling operations represent “the last practicable opportunity” for BPC to carry out drilling as authorized in the environmental authorization, adding that the need to seek further authority could cost BPC a further $15 million in direct costs, and could cause vastly greater indirect and consequential economic harm to BPC, which is estimated to be in the order of up to $500 million.
The attorneys wrote, “The minister of environment and housing bears the constitutional responsibility of determining whether it is in the public interest for exploratory drilling to proceed.
“Following a long and careful decision-making process, the minister determined nine months ago that it is in the interests of The Bahamas for this project to proceed.
“This project will help identify the size and accessibility of The Bahamas’ oil reserves and will thereby facilitate an informed decision in due course as to whether those reserves should be extracted. To order the suspension of the project at such a late stage, after the project costs have been incurred, would threaten its viability and thereby subvert the public interest.”
BPC’s CEO Simon Potter said in a statement earlier this month: “The Bahamian government is exercising its legitimate, sovereign right to find out if The Bahamas has its own hydrocarbon oil resource, which we believe could be substantial.
“Now more than ever, with the islands facing economic fragility, suffering from both the aftermaths of hurricane damage and the impacts of COVID-19, a successful discovery has the potential to boost government revenues by billions of dollars in royalties, and allow for the creation of new contracts and jobs.”
But the coalition remains hopeful that although the drillship is nearly here, it will still be able to stop the exploration from taking place or halt it if it starts.
The post Will BPC be stopped? appeared first on The Nassau Guardian.
source https://thenassauguardian.com/will-bpc-be-stopped/
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