Ecojustice, on behalf of Sierra Club Canada Foundation and Mi’gmawe’l Tplu’taqnn Inc (MTI) is challenging the Bay du Nord project, spearheaded 500km off Newfoundland and Labrador’s eastern coast.
Bay du Nord is the first remote, deep-water oil and gas project in Canada, with reserves estimated at over one billion barrels of oil. The project aims to tap into oil reserves at unprecedented depths of 1,200 meters, creating a new focal point for offshore extraction. However, this rapid expansion of oil and gas drilling poses grave risks to climate, marine ecosystems and Indigenous communities whose livelihood and cultural practices depend on these waters.
The Atlantic waters off the east coast of Newfoundland and Labrador are one of the most important marine environments in the world. A Department of Fisheries and Oceans Science (DFO) report on the Bay du Nord project identified numerous threats to ocean life, including the risk of an uncontrolled blowout. As the project is located 500 kilometres offshore, Equinor’s own forecasts predict that a blowout at the wellhead causing an uncontrolled release of oil into the sea would take 18-36 days to cap.
Of particular concern to our clients, the environmental assessment for the Bay du Nord project also failed entirely to consider the risks of the marine shipping of the oil to the environment and Indigenous rights. The project would lead to 78 additional tanker trips per year, or over 2,340 tanker trips during the lifespan of the project, through Indigenous fishing grounds and important fish migration routes. The added shipping traffic would have detrimental impacts on constitutionally protected Indigenous fishing rights, and on species at risk and biodiversity including endangered Atlantic salmon, humpback whales, corals and sponges.
Despite this serious gap in the environmental assessment, Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault approved the Bay du Nord project on April 6, 2022.
Mi’gmawe’l Tplu’taqnn Inc. (MTI), which represents eight Mi’kmaw communities in New Brunswick, has led the fight against this project’s approval process, citing the government’s failure to fulfill its constitutional duty to consult Indigenous stakeholders. MTI and other Indigenous representatives contend that the federal government’s rushed timelines, lack of notification, and exclusion of key consultations have resulted in a woefully inadequate assessment process. Particularly troubling is the lack of consideration given to marine shipping impacts within Canadian waters, leaving out critical spill trajectory modeling for tanker routes.
For MTI and other stakeholders, the risks Bay du Nord presents to marine ecosystems and Indigenous rights are simply too great to ignore, and they are seeking accountability through the courts.
The Bay du Nord Project is also deeply concerning due to its climate impacts. The project was approved just days after an alarming report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that cutting GHG emissions is no longer enough to curb the climate crisis, and the United Nations chief called approving new fossil fuel projects “moral and economic madness.” Industry and government rhetoric around Bay du Nord being an environmentally friendly project ignores the fact that the process of extracting oil only accounts for 10 per cent of the project’s emissions, with the other 90 per cent resulting when the oil is burned. Recent estimates suggest that Bay du Nord could generate about 400 million tonnes of carbon in terms of lifecycle emissions — that’s the equivalent of the yearly emissions of 7-10 million cars.
At the Federal Court, Ecojustice argued that the Bay du Nord project approval was unlawful due to failure to consider marine shipping impacts, impacts on Indigenous rights associated with marine shipping and the climate impacts of burning the oil that will be produced by the project. Our application was dismissed, and we have appealed the case to the Federal Court of Appeal.
