The Trudeau government has issued a new order expanding a moratorium on oil and gas work in offshore areas in Canada’s arctic.

An order-in-council, issued on July 28 by cabinet, prohibits all offshore oil and gas activities in the area, building off a moratorium on issuing new oil and gas licenses announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2016, alongside then-U.S. president Barack Obama.

That 2016 joint statement designated all arctic Canadian waters as indefinitely off limits to future offshore oil and gas licensing, though it was to be reviewed every five years through a climate and marine science-based life-cycle assessment.

Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada told iPolitics that this review is currently underway.

The new order-in-council is to remain in effect until Dec. 31, 2021. It also freezes the conditions of all existing licences permitting oil and gas work in the area, meaning the licences won’t elapse while the moratorium is in place.

The order is permitted under new government legislation passed by Parliament in late June.

Bill C-88 gives the federal cabinet the power to prohibit certain oil and gas work in Arctic offshore areas if deemed to be in the national interest, and the authority to freeze the terms of licence holders in those areas during the ongoing moratorium.

BACKGROUNDER: Bennett says C-88 still has time to pass before summer break

During a House committee appearance in May, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett said there were no drilling activities in Canada’s arctic waters when the ban went into effect and nothing planned for the “short or medium term,” while the price of oil was flirting with historic lows.

Policy-makers, she said, thought this was the perfect time to conduct a rigorous scientific review on the feasibility of oil and gas exploration in the area.

“It was viewed as a good time to get the science done,” she told the committee.

-with files from Kirsten Smith