Environmental Culture and Mitigation Criteria for Offshore Oil and Gas Activities

While considered a frontier exploration area, offshore petroleum activities began in eastern Canadian waters in 1943, when the first offshore well was drilled off Prince Edward Island.1 There have been substantial changes to the industry since the 1940s, most notably with changes in technology, the Canadian regulatory regime, and in philosophies and culture. The most important advancement in the offshore petroleum industry, not just within Canada but worldwide, has been the development and continuous improvement in fostering a safe workplace mentality or ‘safety culture’ by industry professionals. Inherent within safety culture lies the lesser discussed, and even lesser understood, environmental culture. People, like other living things, have natural survival instincts; they want to work safely because life and limb may be at risk if they do not. It is relatively easy to convince employees, government officials, and executives that safety is important, especially in a high-risk work environment like the frigid Northwest Atlantic. People appreciate the importance of working safely and maintaining a safe work place; their own lives and the lives of people they work with depend on it. So, how does environmental culture fit into all this? While environmental culture has not yet been elevated to the forefront of the minds of the general public when they consider day-to-day workings in the offshore, what lives beneath the waves is, however, at the forefront of the minds of offshore employees, regulatory bodies, and industry executives. This essay discusses the established protections required when working in the offshore petroleum industry on the east coast of Canada, particularly offshore Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.2 Mass media typically focuses on extreme events, such as major explosions and spills. The typical