Fracking ban won’t have significant impact on NS economy, says Finance Minister
Posted Sep 4, 2014 01:19:10 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The provincial government’s new fracking ban has caused quite a stir among the business community, with reports saying it will put Nova Scotia’s economy at a major loss.
Finance Minister Diana Whalen said, depsite what reports say, the ban on fracking won’t leave Nova Scotia’s economy in shambles.
“It wouldn’t have brought in any significant amount of revenue from the royalties.”
She said the province is interested in developing the economy, but added that this ban will give them some time to weigh out the options — and in the meantime, she said it’s not going to dig the financial hole any deeper.
“There’s a different royalty regime for that, they get no royalties for three years, and for that reason, it would not lead to huge amounts of royalties for us,” she said.
According to the expert panel Wheeler report, led by the president of Cape Breton University, an estimated $1 billion dollars could be brought in to the province per year through fracking, along with over one thousand new jobs.
Energy Minister Andrew Younger said estimates like these are “purely speculative.”
He remains firm on his decision, and said the province isn’t going to lose money, because nothing was happening on the fracking front to begin with.
“Even before there was any kind of ban in place, there was not a single application before the government, or the previous government, for hydraulic fracturing in this province,” he said. “There were no projects proposed, there was no exploration underway of those sorts of things in any major way.”
Whalen said if the government wants to take another look at fracking as an option for revenue in the future, the ban will give them time to make that call.
