Ball spoke at the Noia oil and gas industry conference in St. John’s Tuesday morning, trying to strike an upbeat mood in the face of some rough realities.
Regarding a carbon tax, Ball said there haven’t been any recent discussions on what will happen for the offshore industry.
“The only discussion that we would have had in terms of carbon taxing would have been within the realm of the Pan-Canadian Framework,” Ball said. “We made it quite clear there that what we needed was a made-in-Newfoundland solution for carbon pricing.”
The offshore oil and gas industry makes up a big chunk of the province’s total carbon emissions, and when the government announced plans to regulate industrial emissions last year, Minister Perry Trimper said it wasn’t tackling offshore oil platforms because that would require joint federal/provincial action.
The federal government has said all of Canada will have a price on carbon by 2018.
In an emailed statement, ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Darren Woods said the company believes government policy should reduce carbon emissions in the most economical way.
“We established principles almost a decade ago to guide our analysis of policies proposed by governments around the world. These principles led us to support the Paris agreement as an effective framework for international action,” Woods said.
“And they led us in 2009 to conclude that a revenue-neutral carbon tax was a viable option for policy makers to consider.”
Bob Cadigan, president and CEO of Noia, said the oil industry in Newfoundland and Labrador is alright with a carbon tax, as long as it’s applied to everybody.
“The province says it’s going to be a Newfoundland-based solution, which is positive. The reality is, as long as we’re in touch with the rest of the world, if the whole world implements a carbon pricing scheme and we’re competitive in that scheme, we should stay competitive overall,” he said.
“I think there have been some talks about how that might look, but I guess it’s going to be rolled out in the next little while.”