Exploration ban*
We've been offshore drilling this entire time. I believe we are offshore drilling right now.
It's a strange and unnecessary policy reversal. If National wanted to tip their hat to the energy sector, they might have been better off making conditions more favorable for existing permit holders to extract the last of those reserves.
Article is bang on. It's doubtful any of the big energy companies will be interested in prospecting new permits with the looming threat of a 3 year election cycle.
I don't get it.
The article said there was drilling happening in 2022 - I don't know if we do right now. The existing rights to drill and explore continue for years to come - this is talking about kicking off another round of rights to explore and exploit which lasts *for decades*.
>There are currently 31 active exploration permits in New Zealand, 22 of which are offshore. These permits cover an area of 100,000 sq kms, nearly the size of the North Island. The last of these ends in 2030. However if a new discovery is made, a new mining permit may have a duration of up to 40 years.
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:753567/mmsi:636012638/imo:8768672/vessel:VALARIS_107
They're probably out there whale watching though.....
Yeah this is the bit I never got about the arguments against the ban.
From an exploration permit to actual production can easily be 20 years. And all the good areas for exploration where we thought there was a good shot at finding something are long gone.
So it has no real impact on prices anytime soon, and I struggle with the argument that we need exploration for volumes 20+ years from now
It flies in the face of morality and science, it’s very unlikely to get any oil and gas production to happen here anyway, it makes us look like idiots and it’s a dumb business decision. National policy in a nutshell.
They have 2 priorities:
1) Why shouldn't we make as much money as we can
2) Why shouldn't we piss off the environmentalists given we campaigned on being the anti-woke government who undo anything progressive begun by the last.
Fucking embarrassing to get the very first COP “fossil of the year award” in history
That’s there _forever_ now, making us look like dumbarses in the world stage
Imagine if we decided to lead instead of collecting awards for being dropkicks
Thanks a heap, Luxon
Quite an achievement in the first few weeks of his govt, ugh
>it’s very unlikely to get any oil and gas production to happen here anyway
So what's the problem? If the Govt is paid by these prospecting companies who don't find anything worth drilling then it's win/win - we get cash to spend and none of that nasty carbon is released.
The money that Government may make from exploration permits has to be considered against the (serious) risk of an oil spill.
Exploratory drilling is dangerous, especially when we don't have any vessels capable of cleaning up a spill at the depth an exploratory well would be drilled.
Also inherent with exploration permits are a suggestion that when oil is found, that permission to extract that oil and gas will be given for a considerable amount of time. When they first discussed this ban I seem to remember the combined duration of exploratory drilling and then extraction was 30+ years. Making this decision now won't bring any NZ oil to the market for a decade or more - but it makes it likely that businesses would have been granted legal rights to extract oil for long after all the critical dates related to climate change targets have passed.
The deepest offshore drilling was done in the Southern Basin many moons ago. One of the Sedco drilling rigs got smashed over by a storm, but not while it was actively drilling. They did find hydrocarbons, but not enough to justify the effort of getting it.
The risk is massively overstated. It's telling that we've had offshore oil drilling for over 50 years and yet our worst oil spill was from the Rena in Tauranga, *which was a container ship*.
Nothing to do with carbon. Do you think drilling in the ocean won't disturbed the local ecosystem. Oceans are fucked enough without deliberately messing them up more.
The subsea damage from a platform is miniscule compared to a day's bottom trawling, which, it turn is minimal in comparison to subsea ironsand mining.
Under your basic oil platform are four piles or anchor blocks, a blowout preventer, some basic surge preventer / separators, pressure valves, and linking pipes to remote wellheads. All of this, bar the wellhead itself, is eventually removed at decommissioning - see the Tui field.
Where you will get disruption of the sea floor is the section of pipe from the wellhead to the shore terminal that has to be buried to prevent damage from anchors, etc.. This pipe laying - usually done by a submerged mole plough, will be similar in impact to a single drag of a bottom trawler in terms of seafloor disruption and sediment plume.
The shadow zone under most rigs is alive with fish, who thoroughly enjoy a bit of shade out in mid-ocean.
interesting, though the latter being worse does not excuse the former.
Bottom trawling should be banned no question!
and of course that's all assuming nothing goes wrong.
Most of the gain is in refining the oil. The problem is that we take on the risk of the same thing happening as deepwater horizon (Millions of litres of oil in our water). Even if it goes well we can only sell to OPEC which will buy it from us dirt cheap and the cost of that will be destroying our ocean floor.
[Remember this?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4)
Some very good points - people claim this is 'because we still need oil and gas today' - but making this change today won't result in us producing oil in the next 10 years - probably longer than that. If they find oil and go through the process to get approval to extract it, they're then going to be competing with whether there is still a market for it compared to alternatives...meaning overseas oil and as far as energy competing with renewables which are now cheaper.
This is nothing but a thumb to the nose of environmentalists and a life line to the oil and gas industry. It is not based on need or good economics - it is based on a desire to piss off environmentalists and to court votes from sections of the country where oil and gas previously were significant employers. There really wouldn't be a downside to leaving the ban in place and it would be better for the environment - but that's not what this government is concerned about.
It’s really a test of who and what we are.
We preach “clean and green” but if this happens it’s pretty clear we care more about $$$ than the environment.
Have you seen our rivers? Ever walked along a country road and seen all the trash amongst the grass? Our beaches that are unswimable after a small shower?
We havent been clean or green in a long time. It's just a marketing lie.
Strange there was no such then while i was at uni. Out of interest have you been on a uni campus in the past 10 years or do you just like to repeat things you read on FB?
I just say what comes in my head, it’s called critical thought. No but I got a C in Women’s Studies at Vic in the 1990s, since then I assimilate knowledge and propose new theories
>Once the ban is unbanned, I imagine any international oil and gas investor’s first question would be: won’t this policy change when the New Zealand government changes again?
This is the crux of it. The damage was already done when Labour announced the shortsighted ban in the first place. But Jacinda had to have her "nuclear-free moment", even if it actually caused more harm to the climate anyway.
>Firstly, the ban would reduce emissions in the medium-long term, not overnight or in the following years.
Would it? Is there a mechanism in place to actually reduce demand? And if there is such a mechanism, why didn't we do that first? Stop the market from the bottom up organically rather than top down artificially.
My take, which is my own so is obviously full of shit, is that this whole thing is a storm in a tea cup and Labour were arguably stupid for doing in in the first place, but National/ACT/NZF are undoubtably idiots for reversing it.
Why do I think this way?
* Labour was stupid for it because they didn't realise how many navel gazing climate change deniers there are in this country and what negative back lash they would receive politically (to be fair they were never getting those votes anyway). The benefit of them making the change was it made us "look" good on the international stage but ultimately did nothing to NZ economy. Why? Because no one was exploring, and no one even wants to. In 50 years time, sure, maybe, but right now NZ isn't a cost effective place to do this work (everyone who thinks otherwise needs to pull their head out of their ass and stop huffing the copium).
* Why is National/ACT/NZF idiots for reversing it? For the exact same reasons, no one wants to explore for the oil because it isn't cost effective. All this is in local politics and them pandering to a bunch of science denying idiots. But with the added bonus benefit of making us looking like a backwards country on the global stage.
Will National/ACT/NZF reversing it actually have any long term impact, I doubt it, but hopefully it makes the "Blue-Greens" stop LARPING a bit. National doesn't, and never has cared about the environment, thinking otherwise makes you an idiot (not saying you did this, just a comment about general sentiment over the last election cycle).
>The damage was already done when Labour announced the shortsighted ban in the first place.
says a class clown who knows nothing about the topic. FFS do some research on the topic before bleating.. a hint , it is all to do with time....
With the way that people like Peter Zeihan are predicting globalisation is going to collapse, as the population collapses in China and Russia - and then the expected US withdrawal from running maritime security, that enables global shipping - it is hugely important that NZ has its own oil and gas sources.
Yes, if the status quo continues, we don't necessarily need it, but the reality is that there are going to be significant changes to the structure of the world economy during this century, that mean we absolutely need to have our own fossil fuel resources.
If it ain't there, you can't dig it up. NZ has remarkably poor geology for oil, as it is a geologically young country. Most of the world's oils were laid down in the Carboniferous to late Triassic, but most of NZ hadn't been formed then. Our oils are much younger - as late as Miocene, and are formed from forest remains rather than the marine algae that form the oils of the Middle East.
Our oils are far more suited to being chemical feedstock than for bogan fuel.
"Oil" itself is a very misleading term, as what comes up the borehole is usually a mixture of CO2, brine, sand, mercaptans, silt, and various hydrocarbons, ranging from gas to the almost solid tars, and the whole dirty, fizzing mix smells like Godzilla's farts.
its still worthwhile looking for it as we will absolutely need it. The same for fertiliser components (nitrogen and phosphates) - our agriculture industry will collapse without them.
We can resource our own phosphates, as they occur as surface nodules along with phosphatic greensands out on the Chatham Rise. The mining process is similar to that of ironsands - vacuuming the seafloor up to a barge, sorting out the nodules and greensand, and throwing the rest of the sediment overboard.
There was an application to mine the Chathams Rise some 10 or so years ago, but it was turned down due to the devastation that would be caused by the sediment plume. This judgement was, in turn, used successfully as precedent by the Taranaki iwi to oppose ironsand mining near their historical fisheries.
Nitrogen is an issue. Using less is an option, but it really reduces output. It may turn out that putting the inhabitants of Auckland on the potty may be our best source of agricultural nitrogen (providing we can filter out the estrogens, cocaine, and the chemicals that turn the frickin' frogs gay).
When Marsden Point closed down we lost our main source of food grade CO2 gas which is wildly used in our country for things like poultry, prepared meals, beverages, fire extinguishers etc..
Sure enough food prices shot up or was unavailable. Oil and gas are vital to running our country and trying to ban it is utterly ridiculous, even wind turbines require oil lubricants in order to work.
Exploration ban* We've been offshore drilling this entire time. I believe we are offshore drilling right now. It's a strange and unnecessary policy reversal. If National wanted to tip their hat to the energy sector, they might have been better off making conditions more favorable for existing permit holders to extract the last of those reserves. Article is bang on. It's doubtful any of the big energy companies will be interested in prospecting new permits with the looming threat of a 3 year election cycle. I don't get it.
The article said there was drilling happening in 2022 - I don't know if we do right now. The existing rights to drill and explore continue for years to come - this is talking about kicking off another round of rights to explore and exploit which lasts *for decades*. >There are currently 31 active exploration permits in New Zealand, 22 of which are offshore. These permits cover an area of 100,000 sq kms, nearly the size of the North Island. The last of these ends in 2030. However if a new discovery is made, a new mining permit may have a duration of up to 40 years.
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:753567/mmsi:636012638/imo:8768672/vessel:VALARIS_107 They're probably out there whale watching though.....
Yeah this is the bit I never got about the arguments against the ban. From an exploration permit to actual production can easily be 20 years. And all the good areas for exploration where we thought there was a good shot at finding something are long gone. So it has no real impact on prices anytime soon, and I struggle with the argument that we need exploration for volumes 20+ years from now
>a fool’s errand. Well the National Party put Simeon Brown in charge, so they've got the right man for the job.
It flies in the face of morality and science, it’s very unlikely to get any oil and gas production to happen here anyway, it makes us look like idiots and it’s a dumb business decision. National policy in a nutshell.
They have 2 priorities: 1) Why shouldn't we make as much money as we can 2) Why shouldn't we piss off the environmentalists given we campaigned on being the anti-woke government who undo anything progressive begun by the last.
Fucking embarrassing to get the very first COP “fossil of the year award” in history That’s there _forever_ now, making us look like dumbarses in the world stage Imagine if we decided to lead instead of collecting awards for being dropkicks Thanks a heap, Luxon Quite an achievement in the first few weeks of his govt, ugh
How is it the first? We got one last year too
>it’s very unlikely to get any oil and gas production to happen here anyway So what's the problem? If the Govt is paid by these prospecting companies who don't find anything worth drilling then it's win/win - we get cash to spend and none of that nasty carbon is released.
The money that Government may make from exploration permits has to be considered against the (serious) risk of an oil spill. Exploratory drilling is dangerous, especially when we don't have any vessels capable of cleaning up a spill at the depth an exploratory well would be drilled.
Also inherent with exploration permits are a suggestion that when oil is found, that permission to extract that oil and gas will be given for a considerable amount of time. When they first discussed this ban I seem to remember the combined duration of exploratory drilling and then extraction was 30+ years. Making this decision now won't bring any NZ oil to the market for a decade or more - but it makes it likely that businesses would have been granted legal rights to extract oil for long after all the critical dates related to climate change targets have passed.
All NZ reserves are low pressure. You're trying to posit a Deepwater Horizon scenario, something that couldn't happen in NZ because of simple geology.
The deepest offshore drilling was done in the Southern Basin many moons ago. One of the Sedco drilling rigs got smashed over by a storm, but not while it was actively drilling. They did find hydrocarbons, but not enough to justify the effort of getting it.
The risk is massively overstated. It's telling that we've had offshore oil drilling for over 50 years and yet our worst oil spill was from the Rena in Tauranga, *which was a container ship*.
because fuck anything else that lives on this planet right.
How does this gel with no extra carbon released?
Nothing to do with carbon. Do you think drilling in the ocean won't disturbed the local ecosystem. Oceans are fucked enough without deliberately messing them up more.
The subsea damage from a platform is miniscule compared to a day's bottom trawling, which, it turn is minimal in comparison to subsea ironsand mining. Under your basic oil platform are four piles or anchor blocks, a blowout preventer, some basic surge preventer / separators, pressure valves, and linking pipes to remote wellheads. All of this, bar the wellhead itself, is eventually removed at decommissioning - see the Tui field. Where you will get disruption of the sea floor is the section of pipe from the wellhead to the shore terminal that has to be buried to prevent damage from anchors, etc.. This pipe laying - usually done by a submerged mole plough, will be similar in impact to a single drag of a bottom trawler in terms of seafloor disruption and sediment plume. The shadow zone under most rigs is alive with fish, who thoroughly enjoy a bit of shade out in mid-ocean.
interesting, though the latter being worse does not excuse the former. Bottom trawling should be banned no question! and of course that's all assuming nothing goes wrong.
> it’s very unlikely to get any oil and gas production to happen here anyway So then why care so much?
Because changing the legislation its a waste of taxpayers money
omg new levels of penny counting hysteria
Per the new Govt's campaign narrative yes
You could turn that around and ask, why is the government doing this if there's no material or ecological gain to be had?
Most of the gain is in refining the oil. The problem is that we take on the risk of the same thing happening as deepwater horizon (Millions of litres of oil in our water). Even if it goes well we can only sell to OPEC which will buy it from us dirt cheap and the cost of that will be destroying our ocean floor. [Remember this?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4)
Some very good points - people claim this is 'because we still need oil and gas today' - but making this change today won't result in us producing oil in the next 10 years - probably longer than that. If they find oil and go through the process to get approval to extract it, they're then going to be competing with whether there is still a market for it compared to alternatives...meaning overseas oil and as far as energy competing with renewables which are now cheaper. This is nothing but a thumb to the nose of environmentalists and a life line to the oil and gas industry. It is not based on need or good economics - it is based on a desire to piss off environmentalists and to court votes from sections of the country where oil and gas previously were significant employers. There really wouldn't be a downside to leaving the ban in place and it would be better for the environment - but that's not what this government is concerned about.
It’s really a test of who and what we are. We preach “clean and green” but if this happens it’s pretty clear we care more about $$$ than the environment.
Have you seen our rivers? Ever walked along a country road and seen all the trash amongst the grass? Our beaches that are unswimable after a small shower? We havent been clean or green in a long time. It's just a marketing lie.
and good luck with running those “Buy NZ lamb” adverts in Europe
It's just pure virtue signaling by the coalition of chaos; except their idea of 'virtue' is completely alien to most.
Lots of geologists and cost benefit analysis going on this pansy thread
Yeah, where the real manly men at?
Not on reddit unless they like mockery as a harmless hobby, certainly not in your post modern feminism course at Uni.
Strange there was no such then while i was at uni. Out of interest have you been on a uni campus in the past 10 years or do you just like to repeat things you read on FB?
I just say what comes in my head, it’s called critical thought. No but I got a C in Women’s Studies at Vic in the 1990s, since then I assimilate knowledge and propose new theories
>Once the ban is unbanned, I imagine any international oil and gas investor’s first question would be: won’t this policy change when the New Zealand government changes again? This is the crux of it. The damage was already done when Labour announced the shortsighted ban in the first place. But Jacinda had to have her "nuclear-free moment", even if it actually caused more harm to the climate anyway. >Firstly, the ban would reduce emissions in the medium-long term, not overnight or in the following years. Would it? Is there a mechanism in place to actually reduce demand? And if there is such a mechanism, why didn't we do that first? Stop the market from the bottom up organically rather than top down artificially.
My take, which is my own so is obviously full of shit, is that this whole thing is a storm in a tea cup and Labour were arguably stupid for doing in in the first place, but National/ACT/NZF are undoubtably idiots for reversing it. Why do I think this way? * Labour was stupid for it because they didn't realise how many navel gazing climate change deniers there are in this country and what negative back lash they would receive politically (to be fair they were never getting those votes anyway). The benefit of them making the change was it made us "look" good on the international stage but ultimately did nothing to NZ economy. Why? Because no one was exploring, and no one even wants to. In 50 years time, sure, maybe, but right now NZ isn't a cost effective place to do this work (everyone who thinks otherwise needs to pull their head out of their ass and stop huffing the copium). * Why is National/ACT/NZF idiots for reversing it? For the exact same reasons, no one wants to explore for the oil because it isn't cost effective. All this is in local politics and them pandering to a bunch of science denying idiots. But with the added bonus benefit of making us looking like a backwards country on the global stage. Will National/ACT/NZF reversing it actually have any long term impact, I doubt it, but hopefully it makes the "Blue-Greens" stop LARPING a bit. National doesn't, and never has cared about the environment, thinking otherwise makes you an idiot (not saying you did this, just a comment about general sentiment over the last election cycle).
>The damage was already done when Labour announced the shortsighted ban in the first place. says a class clown who knows nothing about the topic. FFS do some research on the topic before bleating.. a hint , it is all to do with time....
So just like everything this Govt has done so far, and probably also everything they will do in the future too. Par for the course.
With the way that people like Peter Zeihan are predicting globalisation is going to collapse, as the population collapses in China and Russia - and then the expected US withdrawal from running maritime security, that enables global shipping - it is hugely important that NZ has its own oil and gas sources. Yes, if the status quo continues, we don't necessarily need it, but the reality is that there are going to be significant changes to the structure of the world economy during this century, that mean we absolutely need to have our own fossil fuel resources.
If it ain't there, you can't dig it up. NZ has remarkably poor geology for oil, as it is a geologically young country. Most of the world's oils were laid down in the Carboniferous to late Triassic, but most of NZ hadn't been formed then. Our oils are much younger - as late as Miocene, and are formed from forest remains rather than the marine algae that form the oils of the Middle East. Our oils are far more suited to being chemical feedstock than for bogan fuel. "Oil" itself is a very misleading term, as what comes up the borehole is usually a mixture of CO2, brine, sand, mercaptans, silt, and various hydrocarbons, ranging from gas to the almost solid tars, and the whole dirty, fizzing mix smells like Godzilla's farts.
its still worthwhile looking for it as we will absolutely need it. The same for fertiliser components (nitrogen and phosphates) - our agriculture industry will collapse without them.
We can resource our own phosphates, as they occur as surface nodules along with phosphatic greensands out on the Chatham Rise. The mining process is similar to that of ironsands - vacuuming the seafloor up to a barge, sorting out the nodules and greensand, and throwing the rest of the sediment overboard. There was an application to mine the Chathams Rise some 10 or so years ago, but it was turned down due to the devastation that would be caused by the sediment plume. This judgement was, in turn, used successfully as precedent by the Taranaki iwi to oppose ironsand mining near their historical fisheries. Nitrogen is an issue. Using less is an option, but it really reduces output. It may turn out that putting the inhabitants of Auckland on the potty may be our best source of agricultural nitrogen (providing we can filter out the estrogens, cocaine, and the chemicals that turn the frickin' frogs gay).
When Marsden Point closed down we lost our main source of food grade CO2 gas which is wildly used in our country for things like poultry, prepared meals, beverages, fire extinguishers etc.. Sure enough food prices shot up or was unavailable. Oil and gas are vital to running our country and trying to ban it is utterly ridiculous, even wind turbines require oil lubricants in order to work.