Crown Minerals chief petroleum geologist Richard Cook says no one is planning to do any deep water drilling for oil or gas around New Zealand over the next 18 months, by which time more should be known about the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
Dr Cook sai
Crown Minerals chief petroleum geologist Richard Cook says no one is planning to do any deep water drilling for oil or gas around New Zealand over the next 18 months, by which time more should be known about the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
Dr Cook said exploration planned over the next 18 months would not be for wells in really deep water, which would mean there was time to find out why the BP-Anadarko well now leaking in the gulf exploded into a fire on April 20 and destroyed the oil drilling platform above it.
Maritime New Zealand had people in the United States trying to work out what had gone wrong with that rig, Dr Cook told a science briefing for journalists yesterday.
Environmental lobbyists have called on the New Zealand government to follow other affluent nations in putting a moratorium on ocean oil drilling until it is known why the rig exploded, killing 11 men.
The Green Party this week called for the government to follow the example of Norway, which has said it will not allow deepwater drilling until the massive oil spill has been fully investigated.
No deepwater drilling should be allowed until it is known what went wrong and that it would not happen again, said Greens co-leader Russel Norman.
Environment and Conservation Organisations (ECO) co-chair, Cath Wallace -- a lecturer in environmental studies at Victoria University -- said it remained to be seen whether the Government's proposed new environmental protection authority (EPA) will have sufficient "teeth" to regulate seabed mining.
No deep water drilling should go ahead until the regulatory authority was in place.
"I don't think we should be going after any kind of seabed mining until we've got that structure set up and some carefully designed processed for liability for environmental damage."
An expert on reservoir engineering, and a senior lecturer at Auckland University, Rosalind Archer, told the journalists that the gulf explosion from a well in about 1600m of water was likely to "slightly put the brakes on drilling in ultra-deep water".
"There's going to be a lot of forensic work to untangle what really happened there. .. people are just going to be inherently a little bit more cautious about going into deep water".
It was possible that not only oil companies but regulators would be found to be at fault.
Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee recently awarded Brazil's Petrobras an exploration permit on the Raukumara block off the East Coast, and said he was aware of environmental concerns, but legislation was being worked on in terms of environmental requirements needed to be put in place in New Zealand's exclusive economic zone.
He said the US investigation into the explosion should be completed by the time that new deep water drilling began around New Zealand.
Dr Cook yesterday predicted oil and gas yet to be discovered around the nation's coasts could be key economic drivers. New Zealand's oil and gas exports totalled $2.8 billion in the past financial year, beaten only by dairy and meat exports, and these exports were expected to rise significantly.
"We're looking to transform the country," he said.
State-owned GNS Science has previously talked about the potential for up to 10 billion barrels of oil to be recovered from the nation's deepwater frontiers.
The ultimate aim of becoming a 'Pacific Norway' would need multiple big discoveries in the 10 prospective basins offshore -- likely all at greater depths than the existing production wells off Taranaki.
