Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Hebron - One year on

There have been a spate of stories centering on the the collapse of these important negotiations. Over the last few weeks, both CBC and the Telegram have been covering the effects of having no new oil projects on deck. And stirring thing up to a fever pitch was the Craig Wescott speech.

Interestingly, while everybody is talking about the effects of having no Hebron, as far as I can tell nobody has asked the Premier about the current state of negotiations.

In the days following the end of talks, Premier Williams floated vague balloons that talks were still ongoing with somebody, somewhere in some way. But while government could not confirm details that this was happening, industry was very quick to confirm that there were no talks ongoing at all anywhere with anybody.

And that's the way things seem to be today.

It's hard to negotiate and come to an agreement without actually talking although it seems industry has already moved on anyway. The fact that Premier Williams has been talking about every issue under the sun but this one leads me to suspect that he knows that too; he'd prefer everybody just forget anything like Hebron every existed.

I'll just close this matter with a link to Caught in the Middle, a piece I wrote published in Atlantic Business Magazine in the wake of collapse.

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