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Opposition leader Ches Crosbie says it’s time for the premier to start thinking outside the box when it comes to securing the future of the province’s offshore oil industry.
Crosbie says there are no guarantees that the $ 40 million announced yesterday for the West White Rose project will amount to anything.
He says the time has come for bold financial decisions, regardless of the province’s debt.
He says as premier, if he could not influence the federal government on an equity stake, he would borrow the investment money needed to buy a stake in the project to get it pumped again, adding that it would be an investment that would yield a return. for the province.
Husky will equal the $ 41.5 million received, bringing the total to $ 83 million for now.
(West White Rose project construction. Photo courtesy of Trades NL.)
NDP leader Allison Coffin is concerned that the $ 40 million given to Husky Energy to support the West White Rose project will go to waste.
Coffin says that while saving 330 jobs in the short term is fantastic, only a fifth of the 1,500 people employed last year remains.
He says there are no guarantees that the project will continue beyond 2021, which is all the more reason to diversify the province’s economy beyond oil and gas, a sector he says is clearly in decline.
Coffin says the money could have produced greater results in the mining industry, where iron ore is valued at $ 130 a ton.
He says this would have meant more jobs and more spin-offs from those jobs over a longer period of time.
Instead, he says oil industry workers are told to stay in the province and hopes there will be a job for them a year or more from now.
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