GNL LOST IN PUBLIC POLICY WILDERNESS

The Furey Administration’s decision to cut $20 million from funding for offshore seismic surveying, a program ostensibly intended to enhance bidding for explorations rights in the offshore oil sector, is the right one. Unfortunately, the decision is a pause rather than a cancellation.

The distinction is self-evident, but at issue is that the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador really hasn’t spent five minutes on the broader public policy questions of how best to pare the expenses of the Government in pursuit of the balanced budget objective described in the PERT Report.

Cancellation, rather than pause, should have been an easy decision in this case, because more objective industry players, which do not include either OILco or NOIA, will remind that majors and supermajors - Suncor, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Chevron and others - are cash rich again, and more than capable of performing their own seismic programs. Global oil prices are replenishing their coffers, enabling them to pay down debt, buy back shares, and in some cases, double the dividends to their shareholders.

This issue should be viewed in conjunction with Government’s recent referral to the banking firm of Rothschild of an unconfirmed number of assets for valuation. Together, the decisions confirm that provincial public policy remains a haphazard, ill-defined, even kneejerk process.

WHY WE SHOULD DISMANTLE NALCOR (PART I)

Nalcor is engaging in lay-offs at the Muskrat Falls construction site.  Undoubtedly, it will say this is a normal and recurring process, except it is known in some quarters the project is suffering low productivity amidst a typical Labrador winter, an unfinished “dome”, and inexperience just as its major contractor suffers a veritable turnstile of senior construction management.  

The Oversight Committee won’t acknowledge the fact yet; perhaps it don't even know. But, eventually someone will have to tell us the project is at least a year behind schedule and that cost overruns are worsening.

The saga of bureaucrats masquerading as entrepreneurs, in a business we can ill afford, plays out.  For whom does the ‘bill’ toll? As always, it tolls for thee. 

Having created Nalcor to pursue a foolish 'energy warehouse' mandate using public money, the Williams/Dunderdale Administrations have gotten the Province into a pack of financial trouble, especially by having sanctioned Muskrat Falls. 

Nalcor's mandate, of course, is far wider than even Muskrat implies. At a time when the House of Assembly is being de-constructed, ostensibly to save a few dollars, we ought to be looking for bigger fish; a place where serious money is being squandered.

Nalcor is one of those places.