Georges Bank a research target as moratorium deadline looms

Nova Scotia is spending $500,000 this year to find out whether fishing and oil and gas industries can co-exist in Georges Bank, the province's energy minister said Wednesday.

Barry Barnet said both industries have changed since the 1980s, when the moratorium on offshore drilling in the rich fishing grounds off southwest Nova Scotia was introduced.

That moratorium expires on Dec. 31, 2012.

"We need to decide whether to extend the ban or to let it lapse," Barnet said at a breakfast meeting of the Offshore-Onshore Technologies Association of Nova Scotia (OTANS).

"It's a rich fishing reserve. It also contains the potential for large hydrocarbon reserves. The estimates we have are 20 years old."

Barnet said there is a lot of new data to collect and review, such as the size of those reserves, the value of the fishing industry, and the environmental impact of offshore drilling.

With the decline of the Sable offshore energy project and no exploration off Nova Scotia for the foreseeable future, Georges Bank may beone of the province's besthopesof keeping revenues worth $500 milliona year flowinginto provincial coffers.

Nevertheless, OTANS chair Mark Healy is urging the province to proceed slowly.

"We do not want drilling off Georges Bank at any cost. The minister mentioned you need to have good science behind the decision, and we endorse any efforts of the government to encourage enough scientific data to prove whether these industries can co-exist or not," Healy said.

The previous energy minister, Richard Hurlburt, reopened the debate about oil and gas development in Georges Bank last year, saying fishermen and oil rigs can co-exist.

Hubert Saulnier, president of the Maritime Fishermen's Union in southwest Nova Scotia, suggested it was time to reconsider the ban because the fishery isn't as lucrative as it used to be. He had campaigned for themoratoriumyears earlier, when it was set to expire for the first time in 2000.

The $500,000 for Georges Bank-related research is part of the $15 million the government plans to spend this year gathering geological information. The datais expected tobe freely available to the companiesthe province istrying to attract to explore for natural gas close to Sable Island.