By Pattrick Smellie
New Zealand can’t afford to write off the potential for wealth and growth in its oil, gas, and mineral estate, says the Institute of Professional Engineers in a paper released today.
The IPENZ call comes as the newly elected government committed to encouraging more oil and gas exploration, and controversy rising over deep-sea exploration and coal mining developments on the West Coast.
“As a nation seeking long-term prosperity we can’t afford to write off this kind of opportunity,” said IPENZ Chief Executive Andrew Cleland. “We need to investigate the checks and balances, and find innovative ways to take advantage of this vast resource.
“When the extraction issue arises in a community, we want people to be armed with knowledge; we want them to feel confident they are asking the right questions”.
The report was issued as OMV, the Austrian oil and gas company, announced it was about to start seismic survey work in its exploration permit areas in the Great South Basin, south of Dunedin and Invercargill.
It also coincided with an announcement by Shell New Zealand today that it was abandoning its Ruru exploration well, which it had hoped would extend the life of the Maui oil and gas field, because its exploration vessel had run out of time to finish it before returning to Alaska.
“Much has been made of Australia’s mineral wealth and the role it plays in keeping their economy buoyant,” said Cleland. “If people simply accepted what they heard in the media, they might consider that the issues are black and white - environment vs prosperity.
“IPENZ doesn’t see if that way,” but cited research showing “a significant number of New Zealanders believe minerals and petroleum cannot be extracted while the quality of our environment is maintained.”
In Wellington, OMV showed journalists around the Polarcus Alima, the seismic survey ship which will do the first three-dimensional seismic survey of two deep-sea exploration blocks to the south of Dunedin over this summer.
OMV has already spent $50 million on two-dimensional surveys in the Great South Basin, an area of legendary prospectivity which has never yielded a commercial discovery, but whose economics may be improving with deep-sea technology and the rising global price of oil and gas.
Shell explained the abandonment of Ruru in terms of a major equipment failure and the onset of foul weather and the winter for meaning the highly prospective well could not be completed.
It will be plugged and abandoned. Shell NZ made no mention of being eligible for penalty payments following the non-completion, and said it had brought the Noble Discoverer to start drilling the prospect in February, in shallow waters some 40 kilometre off the South Taranaki coast.
The ship got into difficulty while trying to leave the well-site during a storm.
“The vessel moved into deeper waters to ride out the storm and later docked at Port Taranaki to shelter for the winter period,” said Shell.
The accident resulted “millions of dollars” of repair work, undertaken by Taranaki firms that service New Zealand’s oil and gas sector.
“A Maritime NZ investigation concluded the Discoverer was operated appropriately in response to the incident and there were no ongoing safety issues with the vessel,” the Shell NZ statement said.
(BusinessDesk)
58 Comments
“When the extraction issue arises in a community, we want people to be armed with knowledge; we want them to feel confident they are asking the right questions”.
Do not ask the WRONG questions. My question, are we going the way of Norway, or the way of Africa? Who cares what you ask, the answer as always will be lies, spin and B.S. Feel free to ask the right questions though, but don't expect to have any say in the outcome, that's old world thinking, modern democracies care nothing about your opinions, comfort, or even survival.
You're onto it skudiv....can I rely on you to supply me with the diesel I will need skudiv...thought not...and yes spills are messy damaging and kill wild life...but so do volcanic eruptions on the seabed and warm currents at the wrong time and asteroid impacts tend to wipe out every friggin thing living....
The important thing....make sure the fatheads follow Norway...good luck with that because most if not all of them couldn't locate Norway on a map with no names.
Thats the wrong question Wolly, you'll be getting your diesel from Z just like everyone else. You know as well as I do that the govt wont give a stuff how much your diesel costs, and if you can't afford they may even bring out a diesel subsidy for you, funded of course by increased borrowing, while the profits from this go offshore
Oh heck I didn't see that skudiv...you are right of course...a diesel subsidy...think of the voter support that would bring a govt....I was blind to that...
And it would be supported by the oil companies too...likely they would hike prices at the pump...course under national the subsidy would mostly go to the 'productive industries' while under Labour/Greens it would go to families collecting less than $100000 in benefits and wages each year...
Maybe the oil companies would provide the loans....through the private banks of course....yes I can now what you mean skudiv...and the boards of directors of these banks and oil companies would find places for 'retiring' or just plain 'tired' NZ pollies....Like at West pac
Where in the world has any pathetic little country like NZ managed to extract its own resources, by enterprises run by its government, EFFICIENTLY?
For that matter, size doesn't seem to make a lot of difference. Think the USSR's resource extraction industry, for example.
Is clear-felling a old-growth temperate rainforest on the West Coast to establish an open-cast coal mine the best NZ can do in the 21st Century?
"IPENZ doesn’t see if that way,” but cited research showing “a significant number of New Zealanders believe minerals and petroleum cannot be extracted while the quality of our environment is maintained.”
How in the hell does open-cast mining "maintain the quality of our environment"??
Next time you are in the South go and visit Lyell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyell,_New_Zealand
http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?q=Lyell&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:of…
http://mp.natlib.govt.nz/detail/?id=7277&recordNum=0&t=items&q=lyell&s=…
Sorry, I gather you didn't see the significance of Lyell, NZ (I assume that's why you posted a link to Lyell, New York).
The point is that a major mining town in its day leaves so little trace a century later. My point is that city dwellers in NZ think the South Island is a small park. Its actually bloody huge and almost uninhabited.
Been to the remnants of Lyell several times ..... amazing ( and sad ) that so little is left . We found a few grave stones up a hill there .....
...... seems typical of the coast , to leave just ghosts of towns , and a cemetary or two .... Waiuta is similar , but still has a handful of houses , as does Denniston ......
Nah, your link lead to NY, I tried to correct it but mine does too. Point taken, mine today, evidence gone in 100 years. Who cares, the whole country used to covered in Matai forests, Rimu, Kauri, Beach etc, now its pine trees, pasture and concrete jungles. The hard work has been done, there is so little of the country left to exploit, it wont be that hard or take very long. We have the technology to do a much more effiecient job then our forebears who only had wheelbarrows and shovels. Exploit the planet right, the planet will recover and be fine. We on the other hand.....
It never ceases to amaze me how, in this day and age of Google Earth, people fall for such irrational hysteria.
The earth is VAST - wake up to this.
Farming is the main land use by a massive margin. Open cast mines can never be any more than a miniscule fraction of the land used for farming. You'd spend hours looking on Google Earth at any part of the world that you were not familiar with, and never find any open cast mine.
Oil pumping rigs, like wind turbines, can co-exist with farming. Or if they are out in the midst of nature somewhere, they will be even less obtrusive than an open cast mine.
Couldn't agree more ...... it's the bloody poor people and greenies who stop me from digging up the country and extracting the minerals ...
...... where do these social welfare parasites think the moola comes from , which allows them to camp out in city parks for weeks on end , or to harass honest hardworking sashimi chefs doing whale research in the southern ocean .....
Better rip in Jolly Kid , and get the minerals out ..... 2014 and you'll be out , matey . 3 years is all you've got to achieve maximum extraction ...... times-a-wasting , start digging , chaps .....
Gummy, you'll no doubt enjoy this website. No doubt the know-it-all flat earthers' will come charging in much like the mind control teachers from Pink Floyds "Another Brick In The Wall" screaming, " If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding.
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat? And the irony is, Gummy, which I’m sure is not lost on you, is that the watermelons think that a song like that is all about the establishment...........
Well good of you to point that out Gummy, nothing is as it seems. For instance democracy and communism really try to achieve the same thing, it is just a different way of going about it.
What happens when we hang them all in the revolution? Are they red necks from the mark the rope leaves around their neck, or blue from the colour they turn?
I don't believe that communism and democracy are mutually exclusive , Mr Scarfie ..... although not attempted , as far as I know ...... the leaders in communist countries have usually been corrupted by power and the baubles of office ...... democracy might upset their good times ........
..... capitalism , or the free enterprise system as some call it , really does exclude communism .....
..... capitalism , or the free enterprise system as some call it , really does exclude communism .....
Modern-day China is mainly characterised as having a market economy based on private property ownership, and is one of the leading examples of state capitalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism
Capitalism is a form of economic organisation and China is a prime example of a communist political system driving one the most successful capitalist economiies in the world.
These days the main difference I can see between communism and democracy in its modern implementation is that of single-party vs multi-party electoral systems.
Not quite sure what you meant by capitalism excludes communism?
Kate, both representative democracy and communism are forms of economic management. Thats the basis of politics. Expositions on politics have always been about that, since Ancient Greece. Plato was a communist and Aristotle promoted private property, though State ownership of land isn't incompatible with democracy as we saw in New Zealand until William Massey was elected as premier on the basis of his advocacy of freehold landownership,
Gee that is a bit deep for a Saturday Kate, had this small mind rushing for the dictionary. (Well actually it is easy online these days).
Thank you as I didn't realise that aesthetics was officially a branch of philosophy, so I guess as a designer/architect I am by default a philosopher also. Heck I feel more important now:-P
One could argue that the experience of New Zealand prior to the government of William Massey, is that the public ownership of land is compatible with both the market ecoonomy and representative governance.
The point where philosophers have erred since the time of Plato and Aristotle is they middied the framing of their debate by conflating the public domain with common ownership of resources. There does not necessarily have to be such a sharp dichotomy between communal and private ownership of resources, because historically a middle ground has existed since time immemorial. The commons where a group of people together have staked a claim to a territory, manage it collectively, and thereby share in its fruits proportionally. Political theorists the likes of Garret Hardin completely misrepresent the true nature of the commons in order to support their agendas (population control), but a growing body of evidence is beginning to destroy the flimsy underpinnings of such dystopian interpretations of the commons.
http://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article461-plato-aristotle-and-the-c…
http://permaculture.tv/governing-the-commons-the-evolution-of-instituti…
Kate, I say that China is another illustration of the fact that Communism and Fascism are actually adjacent to each other on the political spectrum, and that it does not take much change to morph from one to the other.
The main difference I see, is that under Communism there is no private property; under Fascism there is private property but you have no right to it - at any time some Kommisar can step in and take it off you, or tell you what you are to do with your property, what you are to produce and not produce, who you are to employ, etc etc etc.
The TRUE "right wing" opposite end of the political spectrum from these, is libertarianism where private property rights are TRULY paramount. I doubt there is any economy in the world that fits this criteria, or any that are remotely near it.
The Left has managed to bamboozle everybody by claiming that Fascism is "the opposite end" to Communism. Huh? So Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan fir into a spectrum somewhere BETWEEN Hitler/Mussolini/ Franco and Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot? Doesn't work at all for me.
Actually Gummy, communism and democracy aren't mutually incompatible as communistic economic behaviour defines conduct at the household level and historically the vast majority of economic transactions were conducted on the basis of non-monetary communal values.
And the former Republic of Yugoslavia came closest to marrying communism, democracy, and the market economy which undoubtedly contributed to the desire for Capitalist elites efforts to expedite its breakup and downfall in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Since when did greenies wish to be poor David, you lose credibility right from the outset.
So do you think in a situation where New Zealands econonmy has been sliding for 40 years in relation to our peers that scratching around for a few minerals is going to help. Where there is a widening disparity in terms of wealth distribution then how is mineral extraction going to help all but the 1% or less at the top?
Opening up our mineral resources is simply going to allow an asset grab by debtors, better to keep them in the ground until we actually have a balanced economy that can take advantage of them. No resource should be leaving these countries shores in it's unmodified state, to do shows a serf mentality you ascribe to others.
I suspect you can't answer that because there isn't an answer. You accuse others of doing exactly what you have done in relation to Gummy's comment.
Unlike some Greenies I don't think all the idealism in the world is going to stop the extraction of minerals when the scarcity, hence the price, is high enough. Much as I would hate to see open cast mining it is an unfortunate reality that it will occur, probably to the disadvantage of the average kiwi.
Also unlike some, I believe the carbon tax is a scam. However there is no doubt that the planet is being trashed and is close to the point of being unable to sustain its current population.
Go here http://www.usgs.gov/ and look up any mineral to see its known reserves at current production. A lot of key minerals have less than a generation left. Think about what devices in your every day life use chromium and what you will do without it in 16 years.
I know Gummy talks in jest above, but the reality is that Japan doesn't give a toss about the planet but are pretty keen to get a slice of the mineral action when the Antarctic treaty expires. The whaling is a front for the foolish, Japan has a track record of going to war for its minerals and will do so again if necessary. They don't currently have any rights in Antarctica, but if they can keep up their non-historic Antarctic whaling campaign then they might just get a slice of the action.
I know you have your head in the sand David, but hopefully other readers over the weekend will have the curiousity aroused to look into these matters.
Here we go.
Japan's commercial whaling fleet has been given $30million USD from the Tsunami relief fund to help cover the costs of their operation.
IF you think oil, and mineral extraction is the key to wealth, then Iran, Iraq syria, Egypt etc would br the richest nations on earth, with the highest standard of living. Wake up, there is no relationship between selling these finite resources and everyone living in a gold plated utopia.
Culture is the most important thing, then resources.
Japan has the culture and not the resources. The USA has the culture and the resources. Norway has the culture and the resources. Iran has the resources and not the culture. Get it?
I rate NZ as half-and-half on the culture, and that is the main problem. You are right that resources are not the last word. But NZ has a sufficiently superior culture to Iran and Venezuela, that we SHOULD access our resources. If we choose not to, then that is a very bad sign for both our culture and our future. We are simply NOT Japan or Singapore or Hong Kong, with a "future" driven solely by our culture without resources mattering.
And even these nations without resources, USE resources that they get from somewhere else. It is simply impossible to "create wealth" without using resources at all. Failure to understand this, is at the root of many contemporary political problems, not least the problem of the decadent West having to borrow endlessly to support a lifestyle that is long on "consumption" and short on "wealth creation".
I defy anybody to provide an intellectual framework for the existence of an economy with strong wealth creation and minimal consumption of resources. If there is any such thing, it is still entirely dependent on processes of resource consumption in OTHER economies to provide the wealth necessary to BUY its high-value export products like computers and even services.
Paul Callaghan is right. The way to wealth is industry of a type that pays high wages.
Ironically, almost nobody realises that this is Sweden's secret. Leftwing liberals are so stupid, that they claim it is Sweden's welfare system and its high equality that makes it successful. This is like claiming that Microsoft is successful not because it designs and sells a lot of clever computer gear, but because Bill Gates gives a lot of money away.
Sweden has less than 10 million people and has a nuclear energy industry and an arms industry that exports guided missiles. Ironically leftwing liberals mostly oppose any arms industry, or nuclear energy, in their own country. (Paul Callaghan identifies NZ's anti-nuke unreason as a feature of our poor regard of science and technology).
People often claim that the USA benefitted relatively from WW2 because it did not get bombed, and its industries grew considerably. But Sweden did not fight at all, and sold arms to both sides.
Sweden's other advantage that leftwing liberals choose to ignore, is the "social capital" of centuries of Protestantism, and a near "monoculture" with few citizens of cultures that are more vulnerable to perverse incentives. The McCarthy Commission in the early 1970's in NZ presumed from Sweden's example, that generous welfare provisions would not result in significant perverse behavioral changes in NZ. They were completely wrong, especially regarding young Maori women and the DPB.
.... we do ! ..... 50 % of the GDP of New Zealand is spent by the government of the day . .... mostly on welfare policies which enabled previous dynasties to gain political power ....
If that isn't consumption of a shit load of resources ...... then I don't know what is ....
Well put...
If you look at history that confirms it to my mind...the UK etc used up its coal and minerals, it then ponced off its Empire.....now its nowhere...its GDP is based on make believe fiancance and housing ponzi schemes...If we do the same here, thats us in a few decades....
Its a one time use.
Same applies to the USA, its finsihed its recsoures...its dead.
regards
"signifcant, no.. Some clown in the Govn Minerals dept said 1 trillion barrels I think.....only 2.3 trillion inthe entire world and its been half used up......so we have all the rest, Saudi etc is stealing it of us.....
What we see today is probably 50% or more of what there is around NZ. If our Govn had any sense they would buy it and shut the valves....that and build 3 or 4 tallow to bio-deisel plants.
Because when it dawns on the world that this is it the doggy doo doo will hit the fan.....
Consider that NZ is an english speaking nation with good laws and low corruption, there is not Govn reason for the Majors to come here.....what there is is terrible geology and great depths.....the only reason the small players are looking here is because there is nowhere else.
regards
Yeah, leave the resources in the ground for the ChiComs or whatever other enemies of our civilization you ACTUALLY WANT to get them.
You Greenies are mostly Quislings, I have concluded. It is not resource extraction you hate, it is someone making a profit because those resources are extracted.
Skudiv...there is oil in the great south basin ....and yes serious drilling has taken place....Penrod 74 (Hunt Petroleum ) spent quite some time down there and from memory had two strikes....i know this because i worked on it....they were genuine ,what the yanks called Wildcat wells, meaning they didnt have a clue what they would encounter and yes the seas can be what round the world yatchsmen call mountainous.....I timed one of our support vessels the Polar Bear once ....it disappeared for seven seconds into a trough and then its at eleven oclock on the crest of a 30 odd meter wave....I remember one particular storm where we were forced to disconnect and hang off for 9 days till the sea calmed enough to resume digging....At around half a million a day and upwards for the rig ,workboats, choppers personel etc you need deep pockets and you cant be in a hurry and dont even think about doing a BP and cutting corners........ .a very unforgiving environment totally different to the gulf of mexico....A fcuk up in the great south basin would make macondo look tame!....Hunt petroleum quit because Muldoon was going to slap a tax on every barrel produced ( this necessitated a visit to our fine country by the ultimate good ole boy Bunker Hunt ( ...when interviewed stepping off the plane about his reason for being here he Quipped "when you're up against Atilla the hun (muldoon ) youdont send in Goldilocks ).....the same bunker hunt that went on to nearly corner the worlds silver market ..... the technology in those days wasnt up to handling such a challenging environment either and they knew it couldnt be done.........But....the canterbury bight offshore Timaru was interesting....Clipper 1 and galleon 1....cant remember which one ...took a couple of high pressure kicks round 10000 ft which turned out to be fresh water off the southern alps....cased and cemented those in and went on to TD which i think was around 16 - 18000 ft...took another high pressure kick and were stuck on bottom with polymer based mud in the hole and not enough barite in the country to weigh the mud up to circulate out the kick......they wound up flying tonnes of it in and I weighed up the mud from 9.6 pounds per gallon up to 16.6 ppg and we circulated out what had caused the kick, which turned out to be gas.....was a shell / bp / todd well and bp were in charge....stood there with the drilling engineer and watched the returns from bottom and under a blue light they lit up with hydrocarbons.......a day or two later we ran back in and cemented and plugged our way out and then cut the casing below the seabed and installed a steel cap the shape of a squat pyramid so trawl nets could pass over it and that was the end of that....no explanation from bp just "not commercial"....WTF
The biggest irrationalism in all this, is that there could be dozens of open cast mines around NZ that almost nobody would ever see, and nobody would spot them on Google Earth if they were "surfing" and did not know where to look. I find it deeply ironic that in this day and era of Google Earth, humanity has become steadily more and more irrational, not less and less, about how truly vast the earth is and how little human impact on it is really visible. Of course farming is the most visible impact, but open cast mines...? Gimme a BREAK.
If Pike River had been an open cast mine, it is doubtful anyone would have been any more knowledgeable than they were; remember the day - "there's a disaster at the Pike River Coal Mine..." ....."Huh? Where's that"? No-one even knew off the top of their head, where the Paparoa Range was. Nobody had been there or seen it or even remembered seeing it from a plane.
I reckon resource consents for things like open cast coal mines and oil drilling rigs, should involve telephone surveys. 1000 people should be phoned and asked "where is the Young River" (or something like that). If 990 out of NZ-er's don't know, the project, whatever it was, should get an immediate rubber stamp.
Yoo fink!.....spose it's a bit like PPPs Gummy...in an effort to prove the govt is right, they will expend ten times the effort and money in making sure the cracks don't show and the smell aint sniffed.
The first two charter skools will be a fantastic and praise will be spread far and wide on a brilliant achievement by the super teaching staffs and farsighted gifted boards...some of whom will be elevated to more important govt appointments in the Ministry no less...and then after some water has run under the bridge and some pollies have stopped stopping the cracks up with money...the stink will out and the evidence will point to results no better than any other average skool for the average student...but if Key's mob is still in office...bout the time the arrogance begins to dominate...a huge spin effort will kick into gear because no way will they say it was a waste of time and oh yes at huge cost....
You of all people Gummy ought to know that learning is an experience that differs between children...what you fail to pick up on is that certain shites in the community of Kiwi have the idea that their children who happen to be quick and early learners, will do even better if the slow and so forth are removed from the classroom....! Hey presto the Charter skool.
It would be as though one city were designated the "Progressive Productive" and all those with IQs below 110 told to shove off...along with the mentally ill and the aged and infirm and the 'arty types' as they are called...oh and the one caught in criminal doings.........leaving behind the wealthiest most productive and salary bloated.
Charter skool Gummy are seen by some as the best thing since diced teacher and by others as a means to wind back the salaries.
I had to Gummy....I got mates what are just starting their hols...iffin I ignored you I would be on the barby in no time....!
Spelling...yes well some sod who wrote down what the spelling would be, was sipping a fine Port at the same time. Hence we have a set of rools what confuse peepall somefing oarfull.
HUH?
You Greenie loons are as bad as a medieval theocracy - some rationalist points out the facts, and you lash out with your lies, based on some assumed "authority" you have over the truth.
Any idiot can look on Google Earth and see what I am saying, just like anyone can believe Galileo was right. If 99% of Kiwis can't do that, then all "the enlightment" has done for us, is replace one irrational theocracy with another.
Consider this: the same politicians take all the following positions without a hint of irony.
1) the world is running out of resources
2) wars will break out over resources
3) we must leave our resources in the ground for future generations
4) we must not waste money on defence. We can trust any nation, all cultures are equal and just as peace loving as us.
Ask yourself; is the intended result of this, "leaving resources in the ground for the enemies of our civilisation", and is this not really what "Green" - "watermelon" (green on the outside, red on the inside) politics is all about?
In real life, the drug addicts cost of his habit has not spent decades FALLING in real terms.
Resources might be "linear" but the USE to which they are put has always been EXPONENTIAL.
And who is to say that "renewable energy" is not currently at the bottom of an exponential growth curve?
Even "Biofuels" involve turning previously burnt carbon molecules back into energy on a time scale of years rather than millennia (which is what it takes if we waited for it to turn back into fossil fuels again via decomposition and sedimentary layering). Sure, the process is currently unsustainable, but so was whale oil once.
When I was at university in the 1960's, a friend, who went on to be a leading geologist in Australia, said to me once, "per square mile New Zealand has more valuable mineral deposits than does Australia - the difference here is we don't want to dig it up. So don't complain about being poor!" Quite prophetic.
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