The Canadian government will approve on Wednesday an oil project off the coast of Atlantic Canada proposed by Norway’s Equinor ASA, a CTV News reporter said on Twitter, citing an unnamed source.
Canada’s Environment Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Bay du Nord project would involve building a floating platform to drill an estimated resource of 300 million barrels of light crude oil over 12 to 20 years in the ocean near Canada’s Newfoundland and Labrador province.
Equinor and partner Cenovus Energy have not yet made a final investment decision on whether to build the project, located in the Flemish Pass basin roughly 500 kilometers off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Bay du Nord would be Canada’s first remote deepwater project at around 1,200 meters deep. Other offshore platforms in the Atlantic region are significantly shallower.