Grand plans for Grand Banks

OFFSHORE Newfoundland, the country's second-tier oil-producing region after the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB), is pressing ahead with expansion regardless of shrinking exploration budgets. Output from the Hibernia and Terra Nova fields, which has topped 300,000 barrels per day (b/d), will soon reach 400,000 b/d and are poised for upward revisions in reserves estimates. Even at current volumes, the Grand Banks accounts for close to a third of the country's conventional light crude production, while the ageing WCSB is continuing what the industry views as an irreversible decline. By early 2006, Husky Energy's White Rose field is scheduled to add another 92,000 b/d. To maintain the mo