The local oil patch grows increasingly nervous with the bellicose rhetoric from Premier Danny Williams about Hebron development and any future developments.
While the Premier seems intent on playing to the Open Line gallery, there is concern he will talk his way right out of a deal that would see development of the last identified commercial field offshore Newfoundland and Labrador.
Of course, since the Premier himself has committed to getting a deal on Hebron development, it makes everyone wonder why he proposed Andy Wells to head the offshore board so that Andy could get the good deals.
Meanwhile, the Premier ignores the red tape and obstacles that prevent the remaining oil that has been discovered offshore besides Hebron from being developed. Knowledgeable people in the local oil industry have repeatedly point to an overall government regime as being the problem. Offshore Angola or in the Gulf of Mexico, the time from discovery to development is measured in months. Here it can be upwards of a decade and more with all the associated costs.
We pay the costs of that delay, incidentally because the oil in the ground has no value. It only is worth cash when we start producing it.
In other places fields of 100 million barrels and smaller are viable. No one in government here - least of all the Premier - is talking about getting that field size to market. They seem content to do, as the Premier did yesterday with the governors and premiers: talk about our resource as growing. Truth is that estimates are growing - but there hasn't been a commercial discovery sine 1984.
Talk is cheap, Premier.
