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It was Valentine’s Day 2005 when the association representing Nova Scotia’s oil and gas industry first asked their provincial government to invest money in research that would help speed up exploration efforts.

Premier John Hamm and Prime Minister Paul Martin had just inked a deal on offshore revenues and the industry was anxious that some of the dividends be set aside for research that would validate government assertions that somewhere off Sable Island, trillions of cubic feet of gas lay trapped below the ocean floor, just waiting for the right company to tap into it.

Seated at his report-covered desk in an office tower three blocks from the Halifax waterfront, Paul McEachern, managing director of the Offshore/Onshore Technologies Association of Nova Scotia, says the request fell on deaf ears. Hamm was adamant the money would go to pay down the provincial debt, and there was still enough exploration activity at the time that most politicians couldn’t see why offering industry a helping hand should be a priority.

Fast-forward five years, and McEachern says the situation has changed markedly. The number of offshore exploration permits has dropped from 59 in 2002 to just 10 by the end of last summer. While the much heralded Deep Panuke is set to come into production by the end of this year, McEachern says there are no other significant projects on the horizon, and few companies even looking.

He’s not surprised, then, that in an effort to help spur new interest, the Province has finally decided to create a comprehensive atlas detailing the region’s offshore geography. The $15-million effort, dubbed the Play Fairway Analysis, will combine the findings of 10 new oil and gas geo-science projects with a detailed interpretation of available seismic data, and an independent assessment of potential opportunities.

“This business is no different than any other,” says McEachern wryly. “Businesses don’t start changing their practices until they realize fewer people are looking at the products. This project (Play Fairway Anaylsis) didn’t find its legs until exploration companies started going away and saying they weren’t sure there was a recoverable resource here.”

Funded by the provincial government, but managed by the independent not-for-profit OETR Association (Offshore Energy Technical Research Association), the work is being carried out by a number of partners. Researchers at Saint Mary’s and Dalhousie are performing key petroleum geoscience projects, as are the Geological Survey of Canada and the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board. This expertise is being augmented by international experts from RPD in the United Kingdom and Beicip-Franlab from France.

“If we can reduce the risk for offshore oil and gas explorers by giving them information that encourages them to return to Nova Scotia for a second look, that has the promise of tremendous benefits for Nova Scotia,” says Wayne St-Amour, executive director with OETR. “Royalties and fees benefit all Nova Scotians.”

More than 200 exploration, delineation and production wells have been drilled off Nova Scotia since 1967. There have been some successes, to be sure. But Sandy McMullin, the Province’s director of Petroleum Resources, says that even with all the millions spent on seismic and geology work over the past 40 years, there are still lots of unanswered questions.  “In spite of what appears to be an attractive resource base, exploration efforts have failed to unlock its potential,” he says. “Industry has yet to understand the complexities of our offshore geology and they’ve as much as said until we can rationalize their disappointments in shallow water drilling, they won’t be back anytime soon.”

That makes the Play Fairway initiative, and its effort to tell the province’s geological story in a clear and comprehensive way, key to the future of the industry.

Saint Mary's University professors Drs. Andrew MacRae, Georgia Pe-Piper and Jacob Hanley are three of the experts working on the Play Fairway project, a $15 million push to define the region's offshore geology in an effort to re-ignite interest in oil and gas exploration. Credit: Paul Darrow/Saint Mary's University

Dr. Georgia Pe-Piper of Saint Mary’s University is one of six Nova Scotian researchers working to write the newest chapter in the story (officials say that number could increase as the program evolves). With silver hair and cat-eye glasses hanging from a chain around her neck, she looks more like a grandmother than an international expert in petroleum geosciences. She chats amiably in uncomplicated terms to strangers, but if you follow the geology professor into one of the university labs, the conversation with colleagues turns quickly to discussions about the impact of detrital petrology on reservoir qualities and diagenic processes.