Oil giant OMV urged to consider 'obligations to humanity' before drilling off NZ coast

Tuesday, 30 July 2019

Greenpeace activist Abigail Smith, who is climbing the Majestic Centre in protest of oil company OMV, talked to Stuff from her perch on the 10th storey. (Video first published on July 23, 2019)

An environmental scientist has taken aim at an Austrian oil company wanting to discharging a harmful substance off New Zealand's southern coast.

Sir Alan Mark urged OMV to 'seriously consider its moral responsibility and obligations to humanity' and withdraw its applications before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Earlier this year OMV submitted a consent application to discharge an unnamed harmful substance within the Great South Basin, off the southern coast of New Zealand

Protestors gather outside at the Distinction Dunedin Hotel where an Environmental Protection Authority hearing is being held over OMV's application to discharge a harmful substance off New Zealand's southern coast.

The application to discharge trace amounts of the substance from the deck drains of a mobile offshore drilling unit has prompted a three-day hearing, which started in Dunedin on Tuesday morning.

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Henrik Mosser, OMV New Zealand's head of exploration development and production.

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Mark said the company's submission did not include the particular risks to the ecosystem, or even the chemical likely to be discarded.

Yellow-eyed penguins off the Otago coast.

He also questioned why the EPA could not consider climate change when making decisions about drilling applications, likening it to putting out a fire without using water.

'We currently face the most serious environmental issue of all time. We have a climate emergency and a pending climate crisis, regionally, nationally and globally.'

Dunedin submitter Brenda Stebbings said the company's exploration plans were 'wrong'.

She urged the hearing panel not to grant consent until the nature of the harmful substance was known.

The Great Southern Basin is home to protected species including yellow-eyed penguins, albatross, southern right whales and New Zealand fur seals.

Under OMV's Great South Basin permit, the company is required to drill one exploration well before July 10, 2021.

If it wants to hold onto the permit after that, it can only do so on condition it drills two further exploration wells by July 10, 2022.

OMV counsel James Winchester said the company had conservatively assumed that 250 millilitres would be the maximum volume of harmful substances that could be washed into the deck drainage system after a spill.

The specific harmful substance was not yet known, but any risk would be 'negligible', he said.

The company's overarching work could provide 'substantial economic benefits for New Zealand', however no specific benefits could be claimed by the company for the current application.

OMV's head of exploration development and production, Hendrik Mosser, told the hearing the company wanted to explore the Great South Basin in a joint venture with Mitsui.

The oil and gas sectors provided about 5000 jobs in New Zealand and contributed $1.5 billion in royalties over the last four years, he said.

The discharge consent application was a 'minor component' of the company's plan.

Mosser, under questioning from the hearing panel, said the company was working to mitigate the effects the oil and gas it used had on the climate, but not what it sold.

Gerald Hollinger, also of OMV, said the company's Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit had travelled from Norway and should be able to handle the heavy seas off the coast of New Zealand.

'It will not sink because of a 20-metre wave.'

The hearing, held at the Distinction Dunedin Hotel, attracted a heavy security presence with protesters gathering outside the venue at noon.

Some protesters taped their mouths shut to highlight how the public had been silenced from challenging OMV's application on the grounds of climate change, Oil Free Otago spokesman Adam Currie said.

He slammed that approach as 'farcical'.

'It's 2019 and we're having a hearing to consider the impact of a cup of waste, but not the impact of drilling for fossil fuels on the climate, our environment, the species living in it, and the future of humanity.'

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced an end to new offshore oil exploration permits in April 2018.