Marine refuge uncertainty strands oil investment off Newfoundland, says Dwight Ball

Uncertainty over federal efforts to protect marine areas has "stranded" offshore oil investment asNewfoundland and Labrador faces an unprecedented cash crunch,Premier Dwight Ball said Tuesday.

Ball told a federal panel his province wants to enhance ocean health, but future decisions should be collaborative, timely and based on good science not pressure from what he called special interest groups.

We don't need to shut down the economy to be good stewards ofour oceans.- Dwight Ball

Conservationists are pushing for oil and gas restrictions along with other limits in those areas.

Ball says it's a matter of balance.

"We have a lot riding on our ocean industries," he told the National Advisory Panel on Marine Protected Area Standards during its stop in St. John's.

"It's so important to get this right."

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Ball said confusion between existing marine refuge zones andpotential marine protected areas has "stranded investment" for offshore oil activity.

"We don't need to shut down the economy to be good stewards ofour oceans."

Newfoundland and Labrador has 29,000 kilometres of coastline, by far the most in Canada.

Decisions involving the ocean have a disproportionate impact in aprovince that relies on fishing and offshore oil production, Ballstressed.

Newfoundland and Labrador is the only Atlantic province notgetting equalization payments from Ottawa as it faces an
"unprecedented" fiscal mess since oil prices crashed in 2014, headded.

Charlene Johnson, CEO of the Newfoundland and Labrador Oil & GasIndustries Association, earlier told the panel that unpredictability threatens offshore momentum.

Panel to present report in September

She cited a particular need for clarity between marine refugeareas where certain types of fishing are restricted but oil
exploration licences have been issued and marine protected areas, which will have regulations still to be determined.

There are now two marine protected areas off Newfoundland andLabrador, with a third proposed for the Laurentian Channel off itssouthwest coast.

The panel is collecting input for a report due in September tofederal Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc and the coast guard.

It's to advise on developing standards for marine protected areasusing guidelines from the International Union for Conservation ofNature.

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The federal government has committed to protecting 10 per cent ofCanada's marine areas by 2020. So far it has reached almost 80 per cent of that goal.

There are now four producing oil sites off Newfoundland's eastcoast. Ball said the sector contributed an estimated $13 billion tothe federal government by the end of 2016.

Seabirds vanishing

Those calling for purely off-limits marine protected areas saythose benefits have come with a cost.

Seabird specialist Bill Montevecchi of Memorial University ofNewfoundland also presented to the panel Tuesday.

Outside, he said small nocturnal birds known as Leach's stormpetrels are a telling symbol of ocean health. They've vanished inthe millions since offshore oil production started 20 years ago inthe North Atlantic east of St. John's yet there's no reliablescience to explain why, Montevecchi said.

He blames a failure by regulators to require independent analysisand environmental monitoring.

The regulations from the Canada-Newfoundland and LabradorOffshore Petroleum Board have failed.- Seabird specialist Bill Montevecchi

"The regulations from the Canada-Newfoundland and LabradorOffshore Petroleum Board have failed," he said in an interview.

Montevecchi said marine protected areas should be "no touch"zones free of any disturbances to offer a baseline against which other regions are compared.

"There's lots of places to get oil," he said. "We should betalking about the environment. We should be talking about animals, and there's no reason that's incompatible with economics."