Shell Canada Donates Oil Permits to Protect Arctic Wilderness

At a World Oceans Day event on June 8^th, Shell Canada announced that it would donate 30 offshore oil permits to the Nature Conservancy of Canada. The permits, which cover 3,320 square miles of wilderness to the north of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, will likely help create a much larger marine-conservation area in the near future.

Protecting Lancaster Sound

Lancaster Sound, known for its unparalleled biodiversity, is included in the area. Large concentrations of microscopic organisms attract everything from Arctic cod to polar bears to the sound. The area is particularly important to two of the Arctic’s most iconic cetacean species, with 75 percent of the world’s narwhal population and 20 percent of the world’s beluga population migrating through the waters each year. Both belugas and narwhals are classified as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List.

In light of Lancaster Sound’s environmental importance, the Canadian government and the local Inuit communities have tried to formally protect the area since the 1980s. Plans reached a stalemate over the permits, though, because Canadian law does not allow oil or gas exploration within a national marine-conservation area. The previous government suggested a smaller protected area that left out the region covered by the permits, but the Qikiqtani Inuit Association refused to approve those boundaries. Local Inuit communities and the territorial government must grant approval before a national marine-conservation area can be formalized.

Now that the permits have been relinquished, executive committee member of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association Olayuk Akesuk says the association’s goal “is to make sure the marine conservation area is in place sooner than later.” He also underlined the cultural and environmental importance of the area, saying that “it is something we want to protect [to] make sure our great-great-grandchildren have a place to hunt and live off the land.”

Shell Canada’s Motivation

Shell Canada has not requested compensation for the donated permits, and yet some believe their motives are not entirely altruistic. In April, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) filed a federal court case claiming that the oil company’s permits had expired in 1979 and were never renewed, meaning that the company no longer had any legal claim on the land. Shell Canada president Michael Crothers claims that the lawsuit did not inspire the decision to donate the permits, saying that the company initiated talks with The Nature Conservancy of Canada several months before litigation.

Either way, the permit transfer is an unequivocal win for the environment. According to WWF, less than 1 percent of the Canadian coastline is currently protected from commercial activity, but approval of a Lancaster Sound national marine-conservation area would almost double that figure. If finalized, the new protected area would help the current administration fulfill their promise to protect 5 percent of the coastline by 2017 and 10 percent by 2020.

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