Professor Nigel Bankes is one of the authors -- with Professor Meinhard Doelle of the Schulich School of Law and Louie Porta, Science and Policy Analyst with Oceans North Canada -- of “Using Strategic Environmental Assessments to Guide Oil and Gas Exploration Decisions in the Beaufort Sea: Lessons Learned from Atlantic Canada”, published in early October 2012 as CIRL Occasional Paper No. 39. Strategic Environmental Assessments have been used on the Atlantic Coast of Canada to inform oil and gas exploration decisions but in the Beaufort Sea there is no such process currently in place to guide decisions about oil and gas exploration. In the wake of the Deep Horizon spill in the US, this paper considers the lessons learned from the Atlantic Canada experience, and makes recommendations for the design of an oil and gas strategic environmental assessment process for exploration in the Beaufort Sea. The paper is also available on SSRN here.
University of Calgary
Faculty of Law
