Around these parts, we’ve always joked that you can play six degrees of separation everywhere else but in Newfoundland and Labrador you can likely only get to two, at best.
Here’s a case in point:
1. Engineering firm SNC-Lavalin just bought Spectrol Energy Services for an undisclosed sum.
2. SNC-Lavalin is a contractor on the Lower Churchill project according to the project’s website. Its boss is a strong proponent of the project.
If you google “SNC-Lavalin + lower churchill” or look in the upper right hand corner of your browser, the website still reads Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, incidentally, just to emphasise the interconnected nature of these ventures. The Lower Churchill project used to be run by Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, but is now another subsidiary of NALCOR Energy, the provincial government’s umbrella energy corporation.
3. In February, 2009, SNC Lavalin was one of six firms invited to express interest in a piece of work on the project.
4. Danny Williams used to be a director - some report it as president - of Spectrol Energy Services; his interest in the company was placed in a blind trust after he became premier. In his 2008 filing with the legislature’s members’ interest commissioner, Williams listed a loan guarantee to Spectrol as one of his liabilities.
5. Spectrol is an oil and gas industry service company that has done work for, among others, ExxonMobil and the Hibernia project as well as Husky and the White Rose project (starting in 2005).
6. The provincial government owns a 4.9% interest in White Rose, which it manages through a subsidiary of NALCOR. It acquired the interest last year.
7. Bill Fanning, Spectrol’s chief executive was appointed to the Bull Arm Corporation by the Williams cabinet in 2006. Questions were raised about the appointment at the time but the government brushed them aside.
8. Last year, the Bull Arm Corporation was made a subsidiary of NALCOR Energy.
9. Fanning still sits on the Bull Arm board right alongside directors who also sit on the boards of the other NALCOR subsidiaries in the true fashion of interlocking directorates.
10. SNC-Lavalin subsidiary BAE Newplan is suing the proponents of a refinery project in Placentia Bay. In a trip to the Middle East in 2008, Danny Williams reportedly promoted the project unsuccessfully to overseas investors.
How many degrees of separation does all that add up to?
-srbp-