The following is the monthly column submitted to The Laker News by Premier Tim Houston.
Imagine if we stopped harvesting blueberries in Nova Scotia and imported all of ou blueberries from the United States at a premium. We wouldn’t do that. It doesn’t make sense and yet that’s essentially what’s happening with natural gas.
Natural gas is used to heat homes, run generators, power factories and our communities.
Despite having estimated enough natural gas offshore to power Nova Scotia for thousands of years and to meet all of Canada’s demand for over 30 years, none of that natural gas used here is produced here.
To add insult to injury, the gas that Canada is buying from the U.S. is often Alberta gas that is sold to the U.S. and then sold back to us at a profit.
Buying our natural gas from the United States not only drives up our energy costs, it means that jobs and tax revenue benefit far away communities instead of ours.
And when politicians advocate to keep our resources in the ground, it’s music to the ears of the American businesses.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
You may remember the offshore industry thriving under Premier John Hamm in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It brought in over $4 billion in direct royalties to the Province that was used to pay doctors and nurses and invest in roads – all things we desperately need today.
With Nova Oil & Natural Gas, we can do it again.
Many of the same local companies that will gear up to work on Wind West will also work on our offshore natural gas projects.
This past summer, our government opened bids for offshore natural gas, which close at the end of April.
The Prime Minister wants Canada to be an energy superpower. I like that. And Nova Scotia can not only contribute – between wind energy, tidal energy and natural gas, we can be our own energy superpower within an energy superpower.
That’s why I recently took on the mantle of Minister of Energy; to send a message that unlocking Nova Scotia’s energy potential is a top priority It can be done safely and we can provide the resources we need to power our economy, and the revenue to fund infrastructure like schools, hospitals and roads.
We can’t wait any longer. Let’s make it happen.
Tim Houston
Premier of Nova Scotia
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