Jobs, benefits to flow from White Rose expansion: Husky

An expansion of the White Rose oilfield off Newfoundland's east coast will mean good news for the province, officials say.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government on Friday approved the South White Rose Extension, which is expected to produce about 24 million barrels of oil.

The extension, though, is just a fraction of the extra oil that operator Husky Oil intends to pump from the surrounding area.

Two other extensions are in various stages of review and they're both large. One is north of White Rose, while the other is to the west.

In total, the three expansion areas amount to an estimated 214 million barrels of oil. By contrast, White Rose itself is estimated to have recoverable reserves approaching 250 million barrels.

Ruud Zoon, Husky's vice-president of east coast operations, is optimistic.

"We now have three fields, three opportunities to fill that capacity on the Searose [production vessel], which will allow the field to produce longer, to produce more and to continue employment for the people here in the province," Zoon told CBC News.

The expansion could bring good news to Marystown, where the Searose was built.

Zoon said any upgrades to its production vessel will be done in the province, and Husky has praised the work done at the Marystown Shipyard.

"We're very pleased to see new growth in the oilpatch," said Frank Smith, director of business development with Peter Kiewit Sons, which operates the yard.

"It's been kind of slow for a while."

Husky believes the expansion plan will mean close to 10 million hours of work, including engineering, office work and shipyard labour. The original White Rose project, by contrast, was about 16 million hours.

Husky hopes to have all regulatory approvals in place by next year and to start producing oil from the extension by late 2010.

White Rose, about 350 kilometres east of St. John's, followed Hibernia and Terra Nova to become the third field in production on the Grand Banks. First oil was pumped in November 2005.