Jacinda Ardern has announced that no more offshore oil exploration permits will be granted, something that will please the Greens, but she has made some short term exceptions for Taranaki (where most of our oil exploration is based), presumably to try to appease NZ First.
Stuff: Ardern announces an end to offshore oil exploration, with short reprieve for Taranaki
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced an end to offshore oil exploration, with no new onshore permits outside Taranaki.
Actually the way I read things it just stops new permits being given, existing permits can still be used.
Ardern said the Government was “taking an important step to address climate change and create a clean, green and sustainable future for New Zealand”
As well as an immediate end to new offshore permits, some onshore will be offered to the industry for the next three years in onshore Taranaki, none of which will be on conservation land.
“This is a responsible step which provides certainty for businesses and communities that rely on fossil fuels. We’re striking the right balance for New Zealand – we’re protecting existing industry, and protecting future generations from climate change,” Ardern said.
The decision to continue to offer onshore permits was partly a concession to Labour’s coalition partners, New Zealand First, which expressly supports extractive sectors. The move is also designed to head off the risk of judicial review.
“All three of the parties in this Government are agreed that we must take this step as part of our package of measures to tackle climate change. I’m grateful for the support of New Zealand First in ensuring the transition away from fossil fuels protects jobs and helps regions equip themselves for the future. I also thank the Green Party for their continued advocacy for action on climate change.
Russel Norman, the former Green Party co-leader who is now Greenpeace New Zealand’s executive director said the Government “has listened to people throughout the country who have campaigned for seven years to bring an end to offshore oil and gas exploration”.
“The tide has turned irreversibly against Big Oil in New Zealand”.
The industry has warned that ending oil exploration will do little to cut emissions in New Zealand or overseas, as the move will not affect demand or supply.
We will just keep using oil drilled elsewhere in the world.
All existing permits, some of which could continue to operate for decades, will be protected under the Government’s plans.
So it doesn’t cut offshore drilling, it just rules out new offshore exploration permits, for now at least.
This may be largely symbolic given that oil exploration companies aren’t rushing to drill in the oceans around New Zealand. But it is an important symbol for the Greens.
adamsmith1922
/ 12th April 2018This announcement cements in my belief that this administration is one of the most incompetent, economically irresponsible ones I have ever seen. It is virtue signalling that will cost us dearly in terms of investment, confidence and jobs. In fact I will stop now as I am so enraged.
Gezza
/ 12th April 2018Relax. If they’re as bad as you think they’ll be out on their ear in 2020. Although if Bridges is as bad as I think that’s not looking like a given at the moment, imo.
But whatever. Whenever, the next lot can have a re-think. Personally I’m happy to see no more offshore oil exploration and drilling, and certainly not along the megathrust zone along the East Coast. I can’t see how not allowing what’s already not happening is going to wreck the regions.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 12th April 2018Not taking risks is also a risk – often the most costly in the long run.
Gezza
/ 12th April 2018Like invading Iraq & Afghanistan, sort of thing?
Alan Wilkinson
/ 12th April 2018Ask Obama how it went.
Gezza
/ 13th April 2018Couldn’t wasn’t allowed in the helicopter with him n his bestie, John Key when he conned the ANZ board to paying half a million for the useless prick to come here & be his golf buddy.
Gezza
/ 13th April 2018*AirNZ board.
(ANZ board might pay for the next one?)
robertguyton
/ 12th April 2018“Enraged Adam” – socks off, old chap, and get yer missus to rub something soothing onto your soles. Then head back to Kiwiblog for some succour. Sad Keeping Stock’s been canned, aye!
Mefrostate
/ 12th April 2018Please explain your use of the term ‘virtue signalling’ in this context
PartisanZ
/ 12th April 2018I think its a very competent and canny move by Labour-led to placate their Green and greenie voters by effectively doing nothing …
PartisanZ
/ 12th April 2018Forgot to mention … affirm the coalition … which is what they must do at every opportunity …
I’ve suggested they amalgamate their ‘Clayton’s’ cannabis Amendment Bill with the Greens’ much more thorough and compassionate one for the same reason … affirm the coalition …
Gerrit
/ 12th April 2018Just as well we (as in all oil users – including the Greens) have new sources of oil to pave the roads and provide the plastics for mobile phones.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12026246
and
http://www.nnpcgroup.com/PublicRelations/NNPCinthenews/tabid/92/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/811/Nigeria-Inches-Closer-to-40-billion-barrels-oil-Reserve-Target.aspx
Who needs New Zealand’s oil anyway?
Certainly not the New Zealand economy!
Gerrit
/ 12th April 2018The last line is meant to be sarcastic.
After the hard working tax payer will fund all the hospital upgrades, new houses, food for poor kids, etc. We certainly wont by selling some black sand or oil.
Gerrit
/ 12th April 2018“After all…..”
Kitty Catkin
/ 12th April 2018Don’t forget the oil needed for computers and probably every appliance that we have – and if any don’t actually have it as a component, they use it in other ways.
David
/ 12th April 2018She and her urban liberal mates just dont like the regions, no irrigation, no roads and extra fuel taxes.
Blazer
/ 12th April 2018get an electric car ..David.And stop using ..plastic..bags.
alloytoo
/ 12th April 2018Electric car = Coal burner
And don’t give me any bullshit about charging off peak, you don’t even understand that a hydrodam is a basically a battery, that said battery needs to recharge and that any additional load is supplied by burning fossil fuels.
Which means, in the New Zealand context in order to convert our entire fleet we would have to double our generation capability with coal fire stations. (or Nuclear, which I personally favour.) Never mind the upgrades required to the distribution grid.
David
/ 12th April 2018Cant wait for the EV Range Rover Blazer and they are working on it now.
Blazer
/ 12th April 2018Greenlane dealership is offering a free Corgi and a…scarf with every Range Rover…sold.
Gezza
/ 12th April 2018Link?
Blazer
/ 12th April 2018in one of those moods again…no sleep?
Gezza
/ 12th April 2018Making shit up again?
Fake news?
Blazer
/ 12th April 2018link is……S.O.H……….lost.
Gezza
/ 12th April 2018So was the request for a link. Same result.
Griff
/ 12th April 2018Why wait for an Indian car comapny to build another unreliable shite box.
Buy made in the usa and support your hero
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-model-y-exclusive/exclusive-tesla-targets-november-2019-for-start-of-model-y-production-sources-idUSKBN1HI2ZV
AN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) is targeting November 2019 as the start of production for its Model Y sport utility vehicle,
robertguyton
/ 12th April 2018This is fantastic, gutsy stuff from the Green-led Government 🙂
Gezza
/ 12th April 2018What’s gutsy about it? This isn’t anything new or bold from the Greens. They’re always had this as their policy but nobody has trusted them to know what they’re doing & now a Labour government is taking the risk & actually doing something to implement it – they’re the gutsy ones. How is it gutsy of the Greens?
robertguyton
/ 12th April 2018“What’s gutsy about it? This isn’t anything new or bold from the Greens.”
The Greens have always been “new and gutsy”.
Labour’s learning from us, finally!
Gezza
/ 12th April 2018The Greens have been around so long they’re old hat Robert. You’re still thinking you’re a teenager perhaps.
robertguyton
/ 12th April 2018Old hat! Haven’t you seen their present line-up, Gezza??
Hippest party in the House!
Gezza
/ 12th April 2018Children.
Harmless but need to be kept an eye on in case they hurt themselves or someone else.
Mostly girls.
robertguyton
/ 12th April 2018They thrive on that patronising sh*t from old white dudes like you, Gezza.
Gezza
/ 12th April 2018Temper, old fella.
Gezza
/ 12th April 2018Zoe is actually an astute political animal. Greens are her current vehicle. She will ultimately end up as a part of the establishment, possibly the Mayor of somewhere. Maybe Invercargill.
Golriz will end up on the housewives of somewhere or other, or dancing with the stars, & fade into obscurity.
Gezza
/ 12th April 2018🙄 Sorry – Zoe = Chloe.
robertguyton
/ 12th April 2018Thus spake…
Gezza
/ 13th April 2018I thrive on patronising shit like from an old eco-proto-facist white dude.
Gezza
/ 13th April 2018“…patronising shit like THAT from … ”
Stet the rest.
Kitty Catkin
/ 12th April 2018Typo, Gezza, Robert must have meant ‘gusty’.
Kitty Catkin
/ 12th April 2018Old hat is it, stuck in the 60s. James Shaw looks like an old Brylcreem ad in a 60s magazine.
Griff
/ 12th April 2018I went looking for some actual information on our oil future .
PEPANZ: Petroleum Exploration & Production New Zealand
PEPANZ is an incorporated society, operating as a trade association, which promotes the interests of petroleum exploration and production in New Zealand.
http://www.pepanz.com/dmsdocument/16
It is based on bullshit from the IEA
Garbage in garbage out
IEA projections for oil demand into the future are well known to be incorrect and have proven to be obsolete long before they have been published.
Click to access EWG_WEO17_EN-.pdf
http://ieefa.org/report-international-energy-agencys-forecasts-are-misguided-and-shaped-by-conflicts-of-interest/
This is an example of how wrong the IEA have continued to be for years.

Humanty did not leave the stone age because we run out of stones
We are leaving the oil age now for a far larger imperative than what drove us from smashing rocks as the basis of technology.
Any successful oil exploration effort in nz would be a couple of decades from production.
By that time it will be a worthless artifact of a dead industry.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 12th April 2018Rubbish. The world will be using oil for the foreseeable future.
Griff
/ 12th April 2018“What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”.
Hitchens’s razor is an epistemological razor asserting that the burden of proof regarding the truthfulness of a claim lies with the one who makes the claim, and if this burden is not met, the claim is unfounded, and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it.
You do note Alan the lovely graphic above .
The big black line is historic installed PV capacity.
The colored lines are the IEA projections for PV capacity.
That is a stunning example of how wrong both the IEA and you are .
ps
Feel free to add some evidence once in a while for your assertions.
No … linking to some whacko’s blogshite is only evidence of you gullible nature.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 12th April 2018Griff
/ 12th April 2018Exponential growth is exhibited when the rate of change—the change per instant or unit of time—of the value of a mathematical function is proportional to the function’s current value, resulting in its value at any time being an exponential function of time, i.e., a function in which the time value is the exponent.
Here is two one negative and one positive for you to contemplate.

Alan Wilkinson
/ 12th April 2018Plainly the RHS is not exponential though it may have approximated that for an initial few years. A power source that operates for eight hours on some days and least when we need most heating will always be peripheral for most purposes. I looked at the economics of solar panels for our houses a couple of years ago and the salesman just gave up when I pointed out the gross flaws in his cost/benefit analysis. They may make sense for schools or businesses which use all their power during the day but little sense for normal households relative to grid supply.
Griff
/ 12th April 2018A power source that operates for eight hours on some days
Funny that Alan
My panels generate power dawn to dusk every single day sun cloud or rain .
That’s at lest 12 hours of power .
FFS
A cost benefit study a few years ago.
Do read my comments and allow the implications to sink in before you reply.
I brought 80watts of panels in 2007.
I paid the same for 2000 watts last year.
7% compounded over a decade is of course 100%.
Hence a projection.
In a decade it will be about 4000watts for the same money.
Many solar company’s are charging exorbitant rates for installations

This cost will fall as the market matures and the rippoffs are weeded out..
Storage costs are on a similar curve.
It is almost impossible to find a graphic to demonstrate the future as prices are falling quicker than any projections.
Tesla is probably producing at below 140 a kilowatt hour already.
https://www.bloomberg.com/technology
The falling costs means it will eventually be cheaper to buy solar and storage than pay a power bill .
It already is for me as I did not pay other peoples overheads I did it myself.
At some point in our life time the need to plug into a grid dies for domestic users.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 12th April 2018Reality (and this is Australian summer):

David
/ 12th April 2018My power company uses 100% renewable sources getting solar panels is damaging to the environment surely given the stuff used to manufacture them, thats even before you start talking about what goes into the batteries.
Griff
/ 12th April 2018Then posts a graph with twelve hours of generation.
Ignores the comment on storage costs falling just made.
Jesus h and Mohammad the goat boy in a hot tub Alan.
Simple little timer in the circuit for your hot water.

Cost all of thirty bucks and changes your power curve radically .
Modern home with insulation you just heat /cool it during generation hours. In fact here at the batch we have two heat pumps that have been run for four hours in total since Christmas.I don’t expect much more use over winter .
We just open or close windows or close the curtains to maintain a comfortable living environment year round.
All you have left to supply is a few hundred watts for the fridge* media and lighting.
* use a Samsung inverter fridge half the power of old tech.
conservative
kənˈsəːvətɪv/
adjective
adjective: conservative
1.
averse to change or innovation
Considering your qualifications one would question why you don’t do what I have done.
Build your own system and save money.
You have the skills and ability.
All you need is a tame sparky to do the final hook up and you will save considerable costs on your power bill .
With only a small amount of storage along with a hybrid inverter you can ignore power cuts as well.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 12th April 2018Fatuous Griff. 9-5 is the practical generation time on good days in summer.
Sure, if you don’t actually need electricity solar power is fine.
PDB
/ 12th April 2018Hilarious! Griff – the same guy who fails to acknowledge how wrong/overstated global warming predictions have been.
Griff
/ 12th April 2018Oh look another one who thinks empty assertion have value .
Hansen et al 1988 .
https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha02700w.html
Scenario B is closest to our actual emission pathway since 1988 .

Oh dear thats what?
Bloody amazingly accurate for the state of climate science in 1988.
PDB
/ 12th April 2018Ha! Scenario A (you know the worst one the alarmists push) is so overstated its off the chart! Hilarious!
Griff
/ 12th April 2018Oh dear.
You comment is so stupid its hurts .
In case you did not notice
you claimed
alarmistscientists projections of climate change are wrongWhen it is pointed out you are talking rubbish you switch to they got the future emissions wrong.
They did not.
Hensen et al made a range of projections and the one that was closes to reality is correct.
If climate scientist had predicted the GFC and advances in technology that have altered our emissions since they would be so filthy rich it is not funny .
No one predicted such things in 1988….
The reason they make a range of projections based on different emission pathways is we do not know how effective reality will be in changing the minds of the gibbering halfwits who hide from it .
Keeping up with published climate science I am confident that very soon even the most strident denier of realty is going have to accept AGW very soon .
Or face being laughed at by all sane peploe not just the informed .
PDB
/ 12th April 2018Alarmists & climate scientists – there’s a difference?
PDB
/ 12th April 2018I must admit though they were amazingly accurate in 1988 at predicting what happened prior to 1988…..
Zedd
/ 12th April 2018Ostrich alert 😀
Gerrit
/ 12th April 2018As long as tarseal is needed for roads (yes even electric cars need roads), the oil industry will survive.
Griff
/ 12th April 2018The oil industry will survive .
yip.
We still make stuff from stones .
As a feed stock for industry oil will always be valuable because of the number of things we can make from it.
Using oil as a source of complex carbon based compounds is much more valuable for humanity than simply burning the stuff for energy.
The oil industry will not be anything like what we have today.
There will be a global financial crisis when the oil industry’s stranded assets are eventually revalued wiping trillions of dollars off stock markets world wide .
The less NZ is exposed to this predictable outcome the better off we will be.
Blazer
/ 12th April 2018tarseal is not needed for roads…my good man.
Gezza
/ 12th April 2018Well I don’t know what brave new world surface they’re laying on them now but the Wellington Expressway road surface is apparently disintegrating already.
Blazer
/ 12th April 2018hot countries ,just lay concrete.
Griff
/ 12th April 2018Concrete
Much was built in the forty’s to move the yanks tanks around .
Ellerslie to howick has concrete sections of the tank roads still in use.
Alan Wilkinson
/ 12th April 2018The cement industry is one of the primary contributors to CO2 emissions.
Gerrit
/ 12th April 2018To make cement you need heat limestone to 1450 degrees. How to obtain that heat?
Oil? Natural Gas? Coal? Electricity?
To source the aggregate you need to mine a hillside. Mining OK by the Greens?
To make the binder you need sand? OK to mine a river for the sand (beach sand is no good, contains salt)?
To reinforce the concrete you need steel.
Cannot make steel without coke. Cant mine for coal to use as coke, nor mine Ironsand to make the iron to make steel.
I guess we are back to dirt roads? Not metaled (interesting term – wonder why they called it that) roads for that would means mining the rocks to crush that makes the roading metal.
Griff
/ 12th April 2018http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/cheap-catalysts-turn-sunlight-and-carbon-dioxide-fuel
https://www.thespec.com/news-story/4190319-u-s-steel-natural-gas-process-will-soon-replace-coke/
Our conservative Luddites are so funny.
They make up facts because that is the only way they can maintain their distance from the realty of the modern world.
alloytoo
/ 12th April 2018We left the stone age because we discovered metals, those societies which didn’t discover metal remained in the stone age.
What exactly have we discovered that replaces fossil fuels?
Blazer
/ 12th April 2018so are we in the..Fossil age at the moment?
alloytoo
/ 12th April 2018Actually we’re in the Nuclear age.
Blazer
/ 12th April 2018so now you have answered your own…question.Well done.
alloytoo
/ 12th April 2018Indeed, but some societies are still in the fossil age (by choice apparently)
Kitty Catkin
/ 12th April 2018What are solar panels made of ? As if I didn’t know; try making them, transporting them and installing them without using oil at any stage.
Turning the hot water on and off for most people will make the power bill go up, not down.
Blazer
/ 12th April 2018heard Leighton Smith on turbo dribble this morning…condemns the announcement ,then mentions Bahrein has discovered the largest oil reserves ever.Maybe he should see that the smart thing to do,is let Bahrein and co extract the oil and sell it…supply exceeds demand atm…win,win.
Gerrit
/ 12th April 2018Problem is that the New Zealand economy misses out on the revenue that could be gained from the sale of New Zealand oil. We instead have to produce other goods and services to buy oil from Bahrain or Nigeria.
Blazer
/ 12th April 2018produce what you are good at and have an abundance of…so the story goes.Dear young Mr Bridges managed to negotiate a 40% profit share from Anadarko ….I’m sure you can see why that is a crappy,shitty deal…for NZ taxpayers.
Kitty Catkin
/ 12th April 2018It’s like the satirical Southey poem about the battle that cost so many lives among other dreadful things, but ‘Twas a famous victory.’ as one of the people in it keeps saying.