Olivia Woods
Just months after the approval of the Bay du Nord offshore project in Newfoundland, environmentalists decided to take their fight to court and Equinor’s headquarters in Norway.
As a state-owned Norwegian company, opponents hope that Equinor will be particularly sensitive to growing climate concerns over fossil fuel production.
Environmental groups are centering their efforts on Equinor’s upcoming decision on whether or not to move forward with their project. Ecojustice, an environmental law charity, is leading a federal lawsuit against the project’s environmental approval.
“Our federal government says that it understands climate science,” said staff lawyer at Ecojustice, Ian Miron. “So it should understand that Canada can’t be a climate leader and approve fossil fuel infrastructure projects like this one.”
Both the federal government and Equinor have said that the carbon intensity of the Bay du Nord project will be low in comparison to other oil projects in Canada and other places.
They argue that it makes sense for oil to come from projects like Bay du Nord since the demand for oil will remain even as the globe decarbonizes.
A final investment decision is “anticipated within the next couple of years,” the business said, evading the question of the lawsuit filed against the Bay du Nord project. If the proposal is given the green light, oil production may begin by the end of the decade and go on until 2058.
Bay du Nord has the capacity to generate up to 200,000 barrels per day, and a billion barrels of oil in total. An equivalent of 400 million tonnes of GHG emissions would be released.
Original source material for this article taken from here
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