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04 April 2006

Oil industry backgrounders

Check offalnews for three articles penned by one Simon Lono on Newfoundland and Labrador's oil and gas industry.

These are the raw versions; the print ones appeared in Atlantic Business Magazine last month.

Note in particular this portion of an interview with energy minister Ed Byrne. It's been quoted on the Bond Papers before and Simon will post the whole thing in a couple of days. The edited version is at ABM.
MINISTER BYRNE: From our point of view, equity is important from this perspective: it puts us at the table and helps us develop an intellectual capacity that doesn'’t necessarily exist within the provincial structure right now. It puts us in the seat as a legitimate bona fide partner in developments. It helps us gain further insight, expertise and knowledge into the oil and gas industry. It has worked successfully as a model in other jurisdictions and there'’s no reason to think it wouldn't here. Other jurisdictions are both equity partners and royalty partners. So while there is some legitimacy in saying that equity is represented by royalty, there are other benefits associated with being an equity partner. [Emphasis added]