Nine years after its discovery, and despite increasing discoveries, Bay du Nord’s future remains uncertain.

In 2013, Norwegian energy giant Equinor discovered oil in the Flemish Pass Basin, roughly 500 kilometres from St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador and at an approximate depth of 1,200 metres. Known as the Bay du Nord project, it now includes six different oil discoveries (and counting). But as promising as it appears, numerous factors have caused Equinor to put the brakes on the project.

If it does proceed? “It will be the biggest subsea development ever done in Newfoundland and it will be the biggest subsea development ever done by our company, even if we are the biggest subsea company in the deep water all over the world,” Canada Equinor president Torstein Hole said in a recent interview with Atlantic Business Magazine.

“It’s a huge project and it will create a lot of wealth through the province and it will create jobs, both in the development period and in the production period,” he said, adding it will create jobs both directly and indirectly.

It will be the biggest subsea development ever done in Newfoundland and it will be the biggest subsea development ever done by our company, even if we are the biggest subsea company in the deep water all over the world.

Torstein Hole, President of Equinor Canada

Hole hopes Equinor and its project partners—Cenovus Energy (formerly Husky Energy) and BP Canada—will reach a final decision on Bay du Nord in a couple of years. Still, it’s an uncertain timeline for a number of reasons, including the ongoing pandemic.

From the start, he said the project has had some very big ups and downs, some of them because of larger industry issues. In 2014, for instance, there was a huge drop in oil and gas prices, which had the industry shaking. But even then, he added, Equinor continued to explore in the Flemish Pass Basin area and did manage to find more resources.

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