It’s a laudable goal to reduce our expensive dependence on foreign oil but it would be a lot smarter to invest in alternatives like better public transport, renewable electricity and sustainable alternative fuels.

Even if New Zealand is the ‘Texas of the South’, it is unlikely to benefit New Zealand. New Zealand sells itself cheaply with the forth lowest royalty rates in the world and gives subsidies and tax breaks to foreign oil companies. So there will be hardly any royalties, hardly any taxes and hardly any jobs for Kiwis, and the profits will flow offshore. We won’t pay any less for petrol at the pump if we produced more than we consumed because we are still unlikely to process it here or pay less than the international market price.

We know Kiwis face 100% of the environmental risks for only 5% of the value of the oil. The only way to massively ramp up oil production is to drill in hostile, risky environments in deep-water like the Great South Basin or the Raukumara Basin, more than 1000m down. This brings its own risks as we saw only too graphically in the Gulf of Mexico. Our clean, green brand is too valuable to put at risk from a catastrophic oil spill.

The Rena demonstrated we do not have the capacity to adequately deal with even a moderate spill let alone a deep-sea well blow-out. The tax-payer has already forked-out $25 million in costs associated with the Rena and our oil drilling insurance rules don’t even demand oil drilling companies have insurance to cover the full costs of a spill.

At a time when globally, renewable energy is surpassing fossil fuels and other governments, businesses and militaries are planning to reduce their dependence on oil, our Government isn’t even planning to start planning. But they are planning to increase it by borrowing billions to pour on uneconomic motorways.

If oil is the problem, more of the same isn’t the answer. As the International Energy Agency’s Chief Economist Fatih Birol says, ‘we should leave oil before oil leaves us’.

I am a member of Nigel’s team, cleaning sand with Tanja from Papamoa and Marcella who was born in Czech Republic. We three are all good talkers but we get through a fair pile of sand as well. The beach crew on quad bikes are always checking on us and dropping food, drink, more gloves and more bags. Pretty soon we find out where Tanja met Brent and how Marcella might be off to Darfur soon. If we get too random a staunch wahine from our group suggesta we work in a line. Even though it’s a sad and bizarre activity we are pretty happy to be working for a common cause. There is a definite positive vibration because everyone loves this beach and there are at least 1500 people showing what that love means.

“Can they please just get some more oil off that ship?” someone speaks our mind and we keep digging, raking and scraping up oil.

After a few hours I head off to the media briefing which tells us that progress has been made but still no oil is pumping.

A long drive home but a good day. There is something about great about people acting to heal the environment in a deeply practical way. I felt proud to be a member of Nigel’s team.

It’s a deeply worrying situation especially with a severe weather warning issued.

The Government and petroleum industry have gone on the defensive over the speed of the response. When I was in Tauranga over the weekend I detected genuine frustration at the perceived lack of government action and locals were angry that the fine, settled weather was being squandered. A Stuff internet poll of over 4000 people found less than 12% of respondents thought the Government had done a good job so far. Nearly 18% said the response was slow but improving but almost 59% said they had been too slow to act. It’s galling for many given Key moved incredibly fast when it came to an Auckland fanzone and surveillance legislation but not with this environmental crisis.

The slow response should be a wake-up call for New Zealand’s deep-sea oil drilling plans.

The difficulty the Government is having to contain the oil spill from the Rena cargo ship demonstrates the enormous difficulty and expense we would face to contain a catastrophic deep sea oil leak. Given that New Zealand does not even have the local resources to contain the heavy fuel oil from the stranded cargo ship Rena, it is clear we would suffer horrendous environmental and economic consequences if a deep water oil well had a problem, as happened in the exploratory well in the Gulf of Mexico last year. Yet the Government is encouraging deep sea oil drilling: giving tax breaks, as well as subsidies in free geotechnical information to oil companies, and has already granted permits for deep sea oil exploration and drilling.

Obviously an oil well spill and a ship oil leak are two different things but they both put oil into our environment and the Rena demonstrates the challenges a small country faces dealing with an oil spill. Accidents happen and the risk to our clean green brand isn’t worth it.

David Clendon: What is the Government’s contingency plan if there is a catastrophic oil spill or leak resulting from exploratory drilling?

Hon HEKIA PARATA: Maritime New Zealand is responsible for ensuring that New Zealand is prepared for, and able to respond to, marine oil spills. The Marine Pollution Response Service consists of internationally respected experts, who manage and train a team of about 400 local, Government, and Maritime New Zealand responders.

I didn’t find that particularly reassuring at the time, and find it much less so now given what is happening off Tauranga. We know some smart and dedicated people, both professionals and volunteers,  are working desperately hard trying to avert a major disaster, but so far we have seen just how little capacity we have to manage an accident.

Nobody ever wants an oil spill anywhere in the marine environment, but in terms of acccess and ability to respond,  the location and timing of this spill could have been a great deal worse.  The vessel ran aground on a reef scarcely 20km from Tauranga, one of our largest, busiest and most modern ports.  It occurred in calm weather, and was known about almost immediately. Yet we have still struggled to bring together the necessary expertise and hardware to deal quickly  with the crisis.

How much worse would the situation be if we were to allow deepwater off shore drilling, which the Energy Minister and her government are so eager to do, and an accident occurred a long way offshore in foul weather.

The American response to the Gulf of Mexico disaster involved hundreds of vessels, and many thousands of  military, civilian and volunteer personnel.  It also required a second rig to drill the relief well that ultimately enabled the stemming of the oil flow into the waters of the Gulf.

New Zealand does not and will never have that sort of capacity.  The oil companies will resist having to take responsibility to provide it.

There will always be accidents at sea that threaten our coastlines, wildlife and the livelihoods of people who rely on the marine resource.  We need to continually assess and reassess the risks of such accidents and put in place appropriate safeguards and countermeasures.

To knowingly invite and even encourage deep water drilling, an activity that we know is highly likely to cause problems entirely beyond our ability to resolve them, would be reckless in the extreme.  I hope that the reality of having to deal with the Rena incident will cause the government to think again about our energy future in the interests of our environmental and economic wellbeing.

The technique is used to extract ‘unconventional’ oil and gas – that’s industry speak for sources of hydrocarbons that until recently were deemed too expensive or difficult to extract, but as the reality of peak oil kicks in the boundaries are being pushed further out.

The technique has been implicated in serious contamination of water supplies, and a correlation has been drawn between fracking and swarms of earthquakes in at least three American states.  It has been banned in France, is under investigation in other European states, and some parts of the US.

Fracking has happened in Taranaki, and has been proposed for other parts of the country, including the East Coast and Canterbury. The industry in New Zealand is staunchly defending the practice, with John Bay, the Chair of the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association (PEPANZ), insisting that problems elsewhere were caused by ‘cowboys’, whom our government would not allow to operate here.

Given the present government’s enthusiasm for extraction of oil and gas, and their willingness to downplay the risks,  I’m less inclined to rely on them!  The fracking that has occurred in Taranaki was done without resource consents .   The Taranaki Regional Council only last month decided that perhaps there had better be a consenting process in future.

The Greens believe in evidence based policy.  Much of the evidence we are seeing indicates that fracking is  dirty, dangerous, and completely at odds with an intelligent 21st century economic or energy strategy. We want a halt to the practice until we see clear evidence that fracking really is safe, poses no threat to human health; our land, water or level of seismic activity; and that any benefits really could outweigh the costs.

I”m launching a petition that asks Parliament to initiate an independent investigation through the Office of  the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and for an immediate moratorium on the practice until or unless the PCE can give fracking  a clean bill of health. I hope you will sign it, and encourage others to do the same.

So download the petition [PDF] here and get people signing it!

The Chair of PEPANZ appears almost breathless with excitement as he seeks to fulfil the primary objective of his organisation, “to publicise, promote and advance the interests of the oil and gas exploration industry in New Zealand”.

The East Coast, we are told, has been only ‘lightly explored’.  In fact there have been  surveys done of the area’s onshore and offshore potential since at least the 1970s, and the likely existence of  reserves recognised, albeit in a number of discreet fields rather than one large single reserve. All that has changed is that in the face of declining reserves of cheap, readily accessible oil and gas elsewhere, the industry is moving to ‘frontier’ areas with  a much higher risk profile than would have been contemplated even a decade ago.

Apache we are told is a ‘solid’ company, and isn’t it good that Shell are now players in the South Basin?

With a US$43 billion asset base, Apache are certainly in a position to accept some financial risk from frontier exploration, especially when our government is hanging so much of its misguided economic policy on the back of an extraction-based model worthy of 19th century robber barons.   We  New Zealanders of course will be carrying 100% of the environmental risk – it is our land, water and coastlines that could be irreparably damaged in the event of  a major accident.

And of course while it is noted that Shell has entered the fray in the South Basin, no mention is made of ExxonMobil and Todd both bailing out on the grounds of unacceptably high risk due to the harshness of  the environmental conditions and  remoteness.

Explorers apparently are not put off by protests from Greenpeace (who we are told are only in it for the headlines) nor by ‘local tribal groups’.  That sounds to me like throwing down a wero, a challenge,  one which I’m sure nga iwi o te motu will not hesitate to take up!

We are told that fresh water contamination from fracking (hydraulic fracturing) in the US has only been due to ‘cowboy’ operators cutting corners, but we need not fear for our precious water resources because the Government will ensure that no such operators will be allowed here. I wonder how our single inspector will detect the presence of cowboys, assuming they are astute enough not to turn up wearing a ten gallon hat and carrying a six-gun?  How will he or she manage to be present at every site throughout every operation to spot corner cutting?

We desperately need a government with a progressive, 21st century economic policy, based on the kind of initiatives that groups like Pure Advantage are advocating.  We need a clean green economy that works for everyone, not a backward looking ‘drill and hope’ mentality that creates so much environmental and economic risk for so little benefit.

Of passing note is the removal of any overt reference to lignite coal.  Of course bioenergy could be code for it, or ‘alternative transport fuels’ (the Energy Outlook 2010 specifically cites lignite diesel as an alternative transport fuel with potential.)

But basically the strategy is clearly bent on increasing the exploitation of oil and gas.

There are so many aspects of this strategy that are plain wrong.  First off, there is the obvious impossibility of simultaneously increasing fossil fuel production and responding effectively to the unprecedented threat of climate change.

But equally, there are the hollow claims of various immediate economic benefits the fossil strategy might bestow.  So let’s examine these:

1. We need oil and gas exploration and drilling because it will create jobs.

Two reports (commissioned by Venture Taranaki over the past 5 years) seek to quantify the economic benefits (including job creation) of the oil and gas industry in that region.

The first (PDF) is a sober, cut-and-dried analysis by BERL (Sept. ’07).  It states that there were 817 FTE employed by the entire sector in Taranaki in 2006. There are some multipliers that flow on from the industry but, overall, it was less than 2% of the workforce in the region. By comparison, over 2,000 were employed in manufacturing and well over 6,000 in dairy. There were fewer than 1,000 FTE employed in the industry throughout New Zealand that year.

Of those employed, many weren’t local. The report states:

A large portion of the oil and gas workforce are overseas experts, often with international experience.

The second report, The Wealth beneath Our Feet (2010), comes across as a PR piece extolling the virtues of the industry. It’s not clear who the authors are, or what their assumptions were, but they claim the oil and gas industry directly employed 3,730 FTEs in 2009. That’s a 400% increase in the number of people employed in the industry over just 3 years. This number keeps getting cited, and multiplied out further to be responsible for as many as 7,100 jobs in Taranaki.

However, according to Statistics NZ, the numbers haven’t changed all that muchsince 2006 (see table below).

So there are grounds to question the optimism of the second report. More importantly, we need to keep in mind the point made in the first report – many of the jobs associated with oil and gas go to overseas experts. There’s not sustainable job creation in it for New Zealanders, because once the resource is gone (or we have a catastrophic accident), there are no more jobs.

Investment in public transport, clean tech and renewable energy will also create jobs, and we have every reason to believe they will create more jobs than oil and gas.

2. We need to develop our resources so we have secure, affordable energy

Running through the Energy Strategy is the insinuation that Kiwis will benefit from affordable energy if we increase our domestic production of fossil fuels. We use a lot of oil, so we’ll be better off if we drill our own.

This is perplexing, because we don’t use any of the oil that is drilled here – we ship it offshore and import heavier crude from overseas. Even if we could refine and use the oil produced here, we would still pay the international market price for it.

There is the claim that the amount of oil we export offsets the oil we import. But New Zealand households and businesses are importing well over $6b of oil annually. Even though we’re exporting around $2b worth of oil, the Government only gets about $300-500m in royalties and taxes. So it’s not like consumers are going to get a huge reduction in their tax bill which will offset the extra they are paying to fill up their tank.

Source:  The Treasury, Budget 2011. Revenue data.

The only way to future proof our economy against rising volatile oil prices and an increasing carbon price is to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. That requires a serious plan of action, such as Denmark has developed. We need policy, regulatory and funding changes.

This Government clearly has no interest in setting ambitious targets, or even outlining how we might get to the unambitious targets they have set. For example, the EECS strategy has the target

By 2016: The efficiency of light vehicles entering the fleet has further improved from 2010 levels.

Doesn’t say how much better… just better. How’s that for a measurable and ambitious target? That way we don’t need to explain which Government policies will facilitate the outcome.

The Green Party knows we need a plan, and we are working on the outline of what we would do if we were in Government to create thousands of clean, green jobs, and transition our economy away from fossil fuels.

That’s the kind of energy strategy New Zealand needs.

We are a coastal nation with an Exclusive Economic Zone fifteen times larger than our land area and we are a coastal people who work, rest and play on and under the water. For many our waters are our supermarkets, and our playgrounds. Kiwis love our ocean but often when it comes to policy ‘out of sight’ is ‘out of mind.’

A staggering 80% of all the life on Earth is to be found hidden beneath the waves yet our oceans are in crisis. Climate change, acidification, overfishing, pollution, and ocean drilling and mining all imperil the oceans. Today is World Oceans Day and a good chance to celebrate our oceans and reflect on their health.

Humans are slowly yet constantly changing the acidity levels of our oceans through our ever-growing production of carbon dioxide. Our oceans naturally absorb CO2 and the impacts will be devastating: the UN reports that 80% of the world’s coral reefs may die within decades. New Zealand’s Royal Society has warned that our marine life will also be severely affected within decades, impacting on our food supply and jobs.

At the rate we are overfishing our oceans we should get used to replacing the ‘fish’ in fish ‘n chips with jellyfish. We are hammering fish stocks with advanced technology and constantly moving on to other species down the food chain once we’ve depleted one species. It’s like we’ve declared war on fish with all of our technological and industrial might so that when asked the question – ‘where did the fish go?’ the answer is clear – “we’ve eaten them.”

Even fearsome predators sharks aren’t immune, with an estimated 73 million slaughtered each year internationally for the shark-fin trade and some species declining as much as 90%. New Zealand is one of the few developed fishing nations that still allows sharks to be killed just for their fins with their bodies dumped into the ocean, a huge waste, akin to killing elephants for their ivory.

Down in the Southern Ocean in New Zealand waters, the Greens believe in a smart Green economy that delivers prosperity and protects the environment. We want Kiwi fishers kids to be able to make a sustainable livelihood fishing well into the future.

We want to see a vibrant Kiwi fishing industry and that’s why we supported the call for an inquiry into foreign fishing vessels in our waters, many with atrocious records, at Select Committee.

Our sea food industry depends on healthy marine ecosystems but the health of our oceans is under threat from a wide range of sources. One new risk comes from the increased likelihood of deep sea oil drilling. Our Government has given permits to oil companies to explore in areas much deeper than the Deepwater Horizon rig that leaked in the Gulf of Mexico, despite lacking adequate resources to respond to a spill. The Petroleum Exploration and Production Association recently admitted that, at present, a beach clean-up is the only practical response to a major spill off the coast of New Zealand. They have no intention of bringing the latest well capping technology to New Zealand and, even if they did, there is no assurance that it will work here.

Acting Minister of Energy and Resources Hekia Parata stated in Parliament recently  that a team of 400 emergency response workers is on hand to respond to a spill in New Zealand waters (woefully inadequate given that nearly 50,000 were needed at the peak of the oil leak response in the Gulf of Mexico). An oil spill would devastate the New Zealand sea food industry and would tarnish our clean green image, currently worth an estimated $18 billion. The Green Party is calling for a moratorium on deep water drilling until the industry can demonstrate that it can safely control any leak.

We often hear how ‘sustainable’ New Zealand’s Quota-managed fisheries are, however we are measuring ourselves against a pretty bad global average. The Green Party supports protecting the long-term viability of the sea food industry by promoting sustainable utilisation of fisheries. We would achieve this by moving to integrated marine ecosystem management to ensure that fish populations are maintained at ecologically sustainable levels rather than single species stock management. Furthermore, we would manage all fish stock by maintaining the population which supports the maximum sustainable yield as a minimum, not a target level.

The Green Party strongly supports the creation of more marine reserves. The New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy (2000) had a goal of 10% of New Zealand’s marine environment in a network of Marine Protected Areas by 2010, and yet, in 2011, we dismally failed and only have only 0.3% in marine reserves. Meanwhile the Minister of Conservation is declining applications like those in Akaroa Harbour. I think this is unacceptable and the public overwhelmingly agrees. A recent Colmar-Brunton survey showed that 96% of New Zealanders think a larger proportion of their oceans should be protected in marine reserves than currently is the case.

This Government meanwhile is pushing an ambitious aquaculture agenda, but has not yet created a marine spatial plan for New Zealand to determine where aquaculture is suitable. I fear we are on the cusp of a massive privitization of our public marine space.

The promotion of fin-fish farming is of particular concern because it can have significant impacts on the marine environment. Most farmed finfish are fed pellets derived from wild fish stocks, and international figures show it can take between four and six tonnes of wild fish to produce one tonne of farmed fish. This poor rate of conversion, localised pollution and the threat of escaped farmed-fish puts further pressure on our already stressed wild fisheries and marine ecosystems.

With the increasing pressure on our oceans and the lack of adequate integrated protection of our marine ecosystems, we need oceans governance reform.

New Zealand currently has no agency responsible for oceans management, no legal framework for marine spatial planning in the EEZ, no EEZ environmental assessment legislation, and no EEZ marine protected areas legislation, and this has to change. We support a Royal Commission on Oceans Governance to investigate and develop recommendations for oceans reform.

Whilst there have been some admirable improvements, the protection of marine mammals and seabirds from the impacts of fishing activity has not been effective. The Marine Mammals Protection Act and the Wildlife Act make provisions for the preparation of population management plans to address fishing-related mortality for mammals and seabirds respectively, yet, no such plans have been completed. (A staggering 62% of our ocean-going seabirds are listed as threatened). Furthermore, under the Marine Mammals Protection Act, marine mammal sanctuaries can be established in the EEZ, but none have been created.

My favourite iconic fish is the Orange Roughy, a deep sea fish living to over 100 years and whose populations have been hammered by bottom trawling. They’ve been fished down to as much as 3% of their original stock levels in some fisheries, and are in long-term decline. I’ve personally seen kiwi fishers throw overboard man-sized ancient corals ripped off the ocean floor in the Tasman Sea, and I am concerned deeply about bottom trawling’s impact on marine ecosystems.

Hoki, one of our largest fisheries, is also struggling and heading the same way as Orange Roughy. Despite this, Hoki are certified as sustainable under the international Marine Stewardship Council. Pretending Hoki are sustainable will not serve the fish or the fishing industry well – continued decline will have massive economic and ecological impacts on New Zealand. Last year Waitrose, the UK supermarket chain used by the royal family, announced it no longer stocked New Zealand caught hoki as it failed to meet the store’s sustainability policy prompting headlines reading ‘No hoki for the Queen.’ A number of international supermarkets now refuse to stock our Orange Roughy.

Sustainability is not a luxury – it is essential to ensure we have a healthy ocean, fish for food, and jobs in the long term. Overfishing now destroys the economy of the future. Killing marine mammals and seabirds unnecessarily puts our valuable ‘clean green brand’ at risk. Nature Magazine assessed New Zealand against the United Nations Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries – we scored just 56%. It’s not good enough.

Our ocean is not “out of sight, out of mind”; it is the backyard, the pantry and a source of pride for all New Zealanders. It is not too late to reverse the decline, and it makes economic sense to do so now. Let’s mark World Oceans Day by committing to strong action on climate change, a good Oceans Policy, and making our fisheries truly sustainable.

New Zealand has a long history and association with the sea. Māori have a proud history of a respectful coexistence with the domain of Tangaroa. Rāhui were tools that restricted the harvest of kai moana, Tapu existed both around pollution and harmful harvesting methods. Unfortunately those initial ideals where compromised by an influx of Sealers then Whalers. The illusions of an unending resource for harvest and disposal was slowly but surely eroded. New Zealand’s Quota Management System (QMS) establish in 1986 was a world leader in using a market mechanism. While there are some aspects of the QMS that are good, these are often overshadowed by a lack of knowledge and an inability to apply the precautionary principle. The Orange Roughy Crash highlighted this with the successful appeal of a quota reduction challenged due to lack of evidence about the Orange Roughy population.

We face many challenges ahead with oil once again trending upward. The demand for exploration will increase. As has been seen in the Gulf of Mexico recently when the boundaries of exploration are pushed under a permissive regime, tragic consequences can result. I hear that many people down in Dunedin are all a fluster,eyeing up the possibilities of servicing contracts to the Great Southern Basin Exploration and seeing a much needed boost to local industry. Dunedin also reaps a large reward from tourism heavily based around eco-tourism on the Otago Peninsula, yet few consider the risk to this sector.

Climate change is already impacting on our oceans. Absorbtion of CO₂ by our oceans has meant that the atmospheric concentration is not as high as it could be. Unfortunately the consequence of this absorption is an increase in the acidity of our oceans. This will impact on creatures throughout the food chain and put increased pressure on our already threatened marine ecosystems.

As we become more aware of the marine environment our ability to prevent both inadvertent, and deliberate damage increases. We have a golden opportunity to preserve some of our glorious marine heritage. While we do have many small marine reserves it would be great to think about expanding some of the protected areas. The reserves can serve multiple purposes. The primary one, of course, should be to preserve and protect valued habitat but we also shouldn’t overlook the great recreational opportunities that this would present.

Our sea and oceans policy lays out our framework for increased participation in marine conservation. Local communities, as well as recreational and small commercial fishers must be included in marine conservation initiatives, so that we can achieve long lasting solutions that will stand the test of time.

The Associated Press reports:

“We have on these platforms on any given year roughly 100 fires,” said Allen Verret, executive director of the Offshore Operators Committee.

Federal authorities have cited Mariner Energy and related entities for 10 accidents in the Gulf of Mexico over the last four years, according to safety records from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

The accidents range from platform fires to pollution spills and a blowout, according to accident-investigation reports from the agency formerly known as the Minerals Management Service.

Sounds like more of the same – oil companies cutting corners just a bit to increase profits, and not worrying about the consequences. In the Gulf of Mexico, there is a huge oil industry ready to respond in the event of an accident. Despite this, it took months to bring the Deepwater Horizon blowout under control.

What would we do here in New Zealand if a platform caught fire, or worse, Petrobras had a blowout off the east cape where even our puny oil industry doesn’t exist?

If you want to slow the pace of oil development in New Zealand, consider sending John Key an e-card, telling him to put a moratorium on all deep sea oil drilling until the industry can prove they know how to plug a leak in deep water.

If you want to go further, sign Greenpeace’s petition to stop all new oil and coal development in NZ.

Either way, the climate will thank you and so will the environment.

UPDATE: Since posting this, I have found a different article on the New Scientist website that says the Gulf has had 100 platform fires since 2006, not an average of 100 fires a year as reported above. Either way, as dbuckley says in the comments below, we’re likely to see a lot more headlines about it.

So what do we have here?

The stuff that did not work back then is the same stuff that hasn’t worked now. Same busted blow-out preventer, same ineffective booms, same underwater plumes, same toxic dispersant, same failed containment dome, same junk shot, same top kill. It’s all the same technology!

The Ixtoc oil spill in 1979 was in 200 feet of water, while Deepwater Horizon is in 5,000 feet of water. The only thing the oil companies have got better at in 30 years is drilling in deeper water with the same inadequate technology.

When Gerry Brownlee reassures us that only modern, proven oil drilling technology will be used here in New Zealand, exactly what is he referring to?

Hat Tip: www.interest.co.nz

The swiftly unfolding environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico has riveted the world’s attention in recent weeks, but as the blog AidData points out, the amount of oil spilled in the Niger Delta over five decades far exceeds the disaster in the Gulf, with even more devastating environmental consequences. Citing statistics from the United Nations Development Program, AidData says estimates of oil spilled in the Niger Delta since 1960 range from 5.75 million to 10 million barrels, roughly triple the amount of oil that has gushed into the Gulf of Mexico from the blown-out Deepwater Horizon rig.

Click to enlarge

UNDP

OIL SPILLED: Nigeria spill (1960-present) and the 2010 BP spill

The folks over at Skytruth have an interactive map of spills in the Gulf of Mexico. If you follow the link, you will see that there have been dozens of oil related dramas in the Gulf, just since January of this year. It seems that oil spills are far more common that we are led to believe.

Most people don’t even know about the second largest spill in history, the result of the first Gulf war in Iraq/Kuwait.

I am far more suspicious of the platitudes being murmured by our fearless Ministers here in New Zealand than I was just a year ago. Self-regulation and voluntary standards are proving to be a farce, and a very expensive farce at that.

Here’s the short story:

The Minister for Energy and Resources, Gerry Brownlee, puts together ‘block offers’, which are big blocks on the map for oil exploration rights. Oil companies bid on these for the right to explore for oil.

There is a big block offshore to the north of Cape Reinga, quite sensibly called the Reinga Block offer. When the Minister was putting it together, local Iwi said hang on, we think we own that oil! Crown Minerals said OK, hold on while the Minister has a look at it. Apparently, he never did look at it and the Reinga Block offer went ahead anyway.

Since then, Crown Minerals has told the Waitangi Tribunal that the Crown doesn’t necessarily own the oil outside of 12 miles, and confirmed that not investigating a claim of ownership could be a breach of the Treaty and a violation of international law.

I am no expert in international law, but if Crown officials suggest there might be a problem, the only fair thing to do is ask the question. The problem is the Minister doesn’t seem to want to answer the question.

Here’s the long version:

There is, at the very least, an appearance that the Minister may have acted inappropriately when he ignored Te Aupouri Iwi’s claim to the oil resource in the Reinga Block off the coast of the far north. Crown Minerals sent Te Aupouri a ‘holding position’ letter acknowledging receipt of their claim, pending the Minister’s review. It was never followed up and the Minister opened the Reinga Block offer anyway.

What is at stake is quite significant. Crown Minerals testified to the Waitangi Tribunal in April that the Minister had failed to investigate Te Aupouri’s claim and also confirmed that this might be a violation of international law and the Treaty of Waitangi.

Crown Minerals also stated that the oil in our Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) isn’t owned by the Crown.

The Minister’s office has told Maori Television that there is no basis to my claims but to my knowledge he hasn’t made a formal statement. Until the Minister fronts up with his version of the story, I can only rely on the Tribunal’s records.

Here’s an excerpt from the draft transcript of the Management of the Petroleum Resource Inquiry, Wai 796, #2.154, Hearing 26-29 April 2010. In this dialogue, RR is the Crown Minerals guy and GP is the lawyer:

GP       And, the Continental Shelf Act provides that the provisions of the Crown Minerals Act apply with respect to petroleum on the continental shelf, that’s correct?

RR       Yes, they do.

GP       And that’s – - -

RR       They apply the entire Crown Minerals Act.

GP       Bar one provision.

RR       Section 10.

GP       Which is the ownership provision.

RR       Indeed.

GP       Isn’t that a fairly significant exception? The Crown doesn’t own – - -

RR       I mean, it’s – to me it’s not significant, it’s obvious. How else? I mean, the Crown does not own petroleum beyond the – you know, at in the EZ, why wouldn’t that be the position. But, of course, as you well know the Crown has full authority to operate and exercise block offers and so on, it has sovereign rights over resource.

GP       But it can only do so if there are private ownership rights, it must take those into account when issuing permits out in the inclusive economic zone?

RR       That’s right and, you know, Te Aupouri has, through this letter, asserted private ownership rights.

GP       So that raises a very serious issue, doesn’t it?

RR       It raises an issue, yes.

GP       Mm. Because the Crown is obliged to investigate to see if there are customary rights extant when those are raised, that’s an obligation under both international law and under the Treaty of Waitangi, isn’t it?

RR       That’s right, but I would also remind you that the Crown still has authority to proceed with a blocks offer – - -

GP       But is it – - -

RR       – - -because it has asserted sovereign rights over petroleum under section 3 of the Continental Shelf Act.

GP       But that would be subject to any customary rights of ownership that could be proven.

RR       That’s right and I – as yet there is nothing in the New Zealand Court system, there are no claims over those.

GP       But what – - -

RR       But we are considering the issue that you’ve raised.

GP       But that’s why this issue where you didn’t provide a substantive response is so important that the issue of customary rights outside the 12 mile limit is still a live issue.

RR       It is.

So the issue of customary rights outside the 12 mile limit is still a live issue. Why didn’t Brownlee investigate this?

Who does own the offshore oil in the Reinga Block?

Could Te Aupouri’s claim be legitimate? We don’t know because the Minister has failed to look into it.

Was international law violated? We don’t know because the Minister hasn’t responded.

Was the Treaty of Waitangi violated? We don’t know because the Minister hasn’t responded.

What we do know is that the Continental Shelf Act, which says that the Crown Minerals Act applies to offshore areas, also specifically excludes the ‘ownership’ clause of the Crown Minerals Act.

So the Crown can control the management of the offshore oil resource, but it doesn’t necessarily own it.

What obligation does the Minister have to make sure he knows who owns the oil before he issues permits? Crown Minerals seems to think he has an obligation under law to investigate ownership claims, so why hasn’t he?

There are an awful lot of unanswered questions, and what is desperately needed is for the Minister to put all the facts on the table in an open and transparent way. In the absence of facts, all manner of conspiracies can be conjured up to fill the void. That’s not fair to the Minister, yet doing nothing is not fair to Te Aupouri.

There may well be some very good reasons why the Minister failed to investigate Te Aupouri’s claim. There may well be other areas of New Zealand law where the Crown has extinguished any claim Te Aupouri may have.

We know what Crown Minerals has to say about this, but none of this can be resolved until the Minister clarifies his part in the drama.

The silence from the Minister’s office is beginning to get awkward.

As you have probably seen and maybe feel yourselves, there are several things that do not appear to make sense regarding the actions of attack against the well.

In fact actually opening up the well at the subsea source and allowing it to gush more is not only exactly what has happened, it was probably necessary, or so they think anyway.

So you have to ask WHY? Why make it worse? It’s really an inescapable conclusion at this point, unless you want to believe that every Oil and Gas professional involved suddenly just forgot everything they know or woke up one morning and drank a few big cups of stupid and got assigned to directing the response to this catastrophe.

The well bore structure is compromised “Down hole”.

In fact if you note their actions, that should become clear. They have shifted from stopping or restricting the gusher to opening it up and catching it. This only makes sense if they want to relieve pressure at the leak hidden down below the seabed…..and that sort of leak is one of the most dangerous and potentially damaging kind of leak there could be.

This down hole leak will undermine the foundation of the seabed in and around the well area. It also weakens the only thing holding up the massive Blow Out Preventer’s immense bulk of 450 tons. In fact?…we are beginning to the results of the well’s total integrity beginning to fail due to the undermining being caused by the leaking well bore.

All of these things lead to only one place, a fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit…after that, it goes into the realm of “the worst things you can think of” The well may come completely apart as the inner liners fail.

All the worst things you can think of are a possibility, but the very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more. There isn’t any “cap dome” or any other suck fixer device on earth that exists or could be built that will stop it from gushing out and doing more and more damage to the gulf.

It’s a race now…a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it’s last gasp in a horrific crescendo.

Thanks DougR, for that uplifting vision. If you want all the gory details, instead of my cut and paste, there are many more – plus numerous links to official documents and press stories that support some of these assertions.

Why would we want to risk this sort of mess in our own waters?

The Patented Underwater Oil Vent Containment Device purports to “contain any potentially contaminating oil spills beneath an impenetrable shielding of the finest rubber.”

Oil Services even provide instructions on how to use the device.

They are however quick to point out that the “patented Handy Dandy Chain” only comes with one foot of chain and the extra 17,999 feet would have to be purchased at an extra cost.

Let’s hope Obama has this on his watch list.

Needless to say, if a spill that spanned from the East Cape to Taranaki happened here, we would not cope well.

Maritime New Zealand has just $12 million worth of oil spill recovery equipment and dispersing chemicals scattered in 20 locations around the country, and three 8.2 metre transportable oil recovery vessels

It is reckless to start a deep water oil drilling program in New Zealand’s southern ocean, one of the most important ecological regions on the planet, when the oil companies don’t know how to plug deep water oil wells if anything goes wrong.

We should stop the proposed deep water oil drilling program in the Great South Basin until the oil industry identifies the exact cause of BP’s oil catastrophe, explains how it can be prevented from happening again, and demonstrates that it can plug oil wells in deep water.

Then, as if in a dream, she seemed to be talking directly to me — via Twitter.

Sarah, darling, you have me so wrong.

You almost have a point: we’re getting so close to the bottom of the barrel that our addiction to oil is pushing us to extract it from places that we know when things go wrong we have no way of fixing the problem.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is no exception. Instead of the bayous of Louisiana coated in a thick oil sludge, you’d have one of the most important, biodiverse, and beautiful regions of Alaska pockmarked with rigs, run off ponds, roads, pipelines and there is still potential for massive environmental damage.

Russel was repeating his challenge to the Government to halt all drilling programmes until such time as the industry demonstrates that it can handle a leak in deep water conditions.

What Russel didn’t know at the time was that only an hour later, Minister Brownlee would be hosting the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras upstairs on the 9th floor of the Beehive, to sign off on an exploration permit in the Bay of Plenty.

If there is one thing the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico makes abundantly clear is  that oil companies are working beyond the limits of their technology, and human and environmental safety is at risk.

There is no doubt,” Bea told NBC News Senior Investigative Correspondent Lisa Myers in an interview this week, “that safety was compromised. The biggest underlying problem of all, Bea says, is that “we horribly underestimated the risk.”

Ironically, Petrobras had a rig explode and sink in 2001, also costing 11 lives. While that was a clear case of human error and not a blowout, it too was exacerbated by cost cutting and technical failures that could have mitigated the damage.

As we desperately try and prop up our growth economies with cheap fuel, we are being forced to take bigger and bigger risks to grab bits of a smaller and smaller fossil energy pie.

Peak oil will only increase the frequency and impact of this type of accident. It’s high time we called a halt to further exploration and re-evaluated our priorities.

It’s Sunday evening so I’m just going to brain-dump the links I’ve been reading this evening and come back to it tomorrow if I have time.

Amazing Photos Of The Deepwater Oil Explosion

Expert: Surface area of Gulf oil spill has tripled

Government fears Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

Gulf oil spill swiftly balloons, could move east

A graphic explanation of the fight to shut off the oil leak

Apparently the report claims a connection between the high oil price in recent years and the financial crisis, which others have been saying for a while, but it would be interesting to hear that from an institution like the IEA. So far I’ve only gotten my hands on the executive summary, which makes no mention of that though.

Other than the eye popping trillion dollars of investment needed each year to ensure oil supply keeps up with demand (last year they were saying only 360 billion…), here are a few things which jumped out at me from the summary:

Quite conservative estimates for oil prices (already too low!)
“Oil prices are assumed to fall from the 2008 level of $97 per barrel to around $60 per barrel in 2009 (roughly the level of mid-2009), but then rebound with the economic recovery to reach $100 per barrel by 2020 and $115 per barrel by 2030 (in year-2008 dollars).”

Acknowledgement of the fact that 450ppm will give us only a 50% chance of hitting the 2 degrees of warming target
“To limit to 50% the probability of a global average temperature increase in excess of 2°C, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would need to be stabilised at a level around 450 ppm CO2-eq”

It ends with an urgent call to action on climate change
“A critical ingredient in the success of efforts to prevent climate change will be the speed with which governments act on their commitments. Saving the planet cannot wait. For every year that passes, the window for action on emissions over a given period becomes narrower — and the costs of transforming the energy sector increase. We calculate that each year of delay before moving onto the emissions path consistent with a 2°C temperature increase would add approximately $500 billion to the global incremental investment cost of $10.5 trillion for the period 2010-2030. A delay of just a few years would probably render that goal completely out of reach. If this were the case, the additional adaptation costs would be many times this figure. Countries attending the UN Climate Change Conference must not lose sight of this. The time has come to make the hard choices needed to turn promises into action.”

SeekingAlpha have done a summary of the executive summary, for the truly rushed among us.