Quote:
Originally Posted by displacednewfie
How is it pointless? I know I have been gone for 3 years now, but has the province or city done anything to diversify the economy? St. John's like the MAJORITY of ALBERTA is floating on the clouds of OIL & GAS.
There are a large amount of people that do not work in that Industry, and unlike Alberta, wages in NL are not competitive. I looked at a job posting for my field last night online and they wanted 7+ years experience and are offering a pathetic 45K as a yearly salary for that position.
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It's not a pointless question, it's just an obvious answer. St. John's is tied to the oil and gas industry. Corner Brook is tied at the hip to its mill, Port-aux-Basques to the ferries, Long Harbour and the processing plant. Take any one of those away from the communities and they will suffer.
St. John's and Alberta have been and still are floating on the profits of oil and gas, but the good news is that the future of oil and gas development looks bright. There have been several discoveries recently that bode well for the future, and Hebron is still in the construction phase. We are past peak oil on a few of the current operations but they still have several years of work ahead of them and any losses will be negated by newer projects coming along. Providing there is no crash in the price of oil, both Alberta and St. John's should be healthy for quite some time.
That said, we do need to be developing industries that are sustainable long term away from the oil and gas industry. The concept behind Innovation NL is great, nurturing small business and start-ups, but obviously it's a far cry from developing sustainable long term industry in the province.