The following statement was given today in the House of Assembly by the Honourable Siobhan Coady, Minister of Natural Resources:

Mr. Speaker, due to the tremendous efforts of our government, we now have a new regional assessment process that maintains the strong protection of the offshore environment while significantly shortening timelines for exploration drilling program approval – a major consideration for companies looking to make global investment decisions.

The new regional assessment is a significant improvement over the previous process which caused considerable delays in issuing authorizations for offshore exploration activities that typically take 30-60 days to complete.

This was largely a result of a decision made in 2010 to move the responsibility for offshore environmental assessments from the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (C-NLOPB) to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA).

Through the new process approval timelines have decreased by 90 per cent – from 900 to as little as 90 days.

In Advance 2030, we outlined the future of the offshore oil and gas industry of which there is tremendous potential – with over 650 leads identified to date, eight new entrants in the last six years, and resource potential of 52.2 billion barrels of oil and 199.6 trillion cubic feet of gas in just nine per cent of the province’s offshore.

The regional assessment process allows us to be globally competitive while ensuring an effective environmental regime.