Revered nation’s Statoil explorations hushed up here
Norway’s Statoil is one of the major international investors in oil exploration in the New Zealand jurisdiction. Statoil (State oil) operations include among others the 28,000 square kilometre permit in the East Coast and Pegasus basins, southeast off New Zealand’s North Island. Norway was among the most fervent backers of the Paris Climate accords. Norway with a population similar to New Zealand’s has accumulated from its oil developments a sovereign wealth fund superior to Saudi Arabia’s. At a time when New Zealand is in the throes of shutting down its oil exploration sector, Norway, held up as an example of nationwide Green values, seeks to develop its already immense resources. The fact that this Green-revered nation is also one of the major current oil explorers in the New Zealand jurisdiction has been deliberately ignored. The Statoil revelations come at the same time as indications that under pressure to appease its doctrinal wing the Labour coalition government introduced the exploration ban even when it was receiving indications of the presence in New Zealand of Mycoplasma bovis. So far officials have sat on the real problem which is that the existence of the pathogen in New Zealand will give international buyers, already looking at a global over-supply, the opportunity to break contracts. The plausibility notion behind the original anti- oil campaign was to allow New Zealand, in its own popular parlance, to “punch above its weight” in international forums of the well-intentioned kind. Now, in contrast, New Zealand is looking silly having wilfully signalled the end of a major locomotive, pulling, force in its economy at a time when its main force, dairy, was entering a period, to put it mildly, of uncertainty. This in turn is compounded because the main region of oil exploration and production in New Zealand is Taranaki […]