Norway sensibly halts new oil drilling

The Greens are calling on Minister Brownlee to follow Norway’s lead and put a moratorium on new oil exploration drilling until such time as the Deepwater Horizon incident has been fully investigated.

Norway’s petroleum and energy Minister, Terje Riis-Johansen, has stated that it is ‘not appropriate’ to allow deep water drilling until the results of an investigation are completed. He does, however, expect permit allocations to resume next year.

“When an oil giant like Norway takes pause after an environmental disaster like this, it only makes sense that we do the same,” Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman said.

“New Zealand has nowhere near the same clean-up capacity or experience as Norway, but we are happy to rush in, despite the risks.

“The Government needs to put all deep water oil drilling programmes on hold until the oil companies can show that:

• They know exactly what went wrong with Deepwater Horizon;
• They can ensure that it won’t happen again; and
• If it does ever happen again, they have the ability to plug the well.

“It is environmentally reckless to start a deep water oil drilling program in 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,” Dr Norman said.