Oil Industry Needs to Face Facts

10 05 2012

This article originally appeared as an Opinion Piece in The Dominion Post on 10 May 2012.

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BP & Anadarko’s Deepwater Horizon rig going down, April 2010

Oil industry representative David Robinson’s Opinion Piece on Tuesday said it’s time for the truth about oil drilling. It promised facts but provided only rhetoric. Mr Robinson says there have been no ‘major incidents’ in oil production in New Zealand, which is simply not true. The following incidents, all undeniably major, are examples of facts the oil industry tries to keep to itself.

In 2007 the Umuroa facility, operated by Norway’s Prosafe and Australian company AWE, spilt 23 tons of crude oil off the Taranaki coast. The spill affected nearly 15 kilometres of coastline, took 232 days to clean up and resulted in a successful court prosecution.

In 2010 Austrian oil giant OMV accepted responsibility for a large spill from the Maari field that saw oil washing up on Kapiti Coast. The Rena disaster revealed just how ill equipped authorities are to contain anything beyond a minor inshore spill under perfect weather conditions.

The offshore wells in Taranaki are at depths of no more than 150 metres, the Raukumara Basin off East Cape where Petrobras has been given a permit to drill is up to 3,100m deep and the BP exploratory well that blew out in the Gulf of Mexico for three months in 2010 was at a depth of only 1,500m. Anadarko (one of the DeepWater Horizon companies) has plans to drill off the coast of Taranaki and Otago in up to 3,000m of water.

In 2009 the Montara spill off the west coast of Australia resulted in the equivalent of one Rena sized disaster every day for 74 days in a row. Why would New Zealand be immune from such risks?

Over the past 15 years 282 fatalities among Petrobras staff and contract workers have been documented in accidents at oil rigs and refineries. Petrobras has suffered 27 rig blowouts since 1980 and was the first company allowed to drill at depth in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP disaster. Just before oil was due to start flowing a production riser broke away, if it had happened a few days later there could have been a repeat of the Deepwater Horizon disaster less than a year later.

Claims that a recent GNS report on earthquakes and fracking in Taranaki suggest there is no credible link, overlook the fact pointed out by seismology expert Michael Hasting that the GNS seismic detectors are not calibrated for nor close enough to fracking operations to determine any relationship. GNS should also acknowledge they are contracted to the industry when they comment on overseas reports citing evidence of a direct link.

If the industry is committed as Mr Robinson says to proper public consultation then they should agree to all resource consent applications for mining activities being subject to full notification.

The industry asks the public to trust them on their record in Taranaki. But with only 40 wells drilled, no independent scientific studies, sparse regulation and minimal monitoring, we need to consider the overseas evidence.

Professor Avner Vengosh from Duke University has led some of the most comprehensive studies on water quality related to fracking and found a direct link between water contamination and hydro-fracking. Professor Karlis Muehlenbachs at the University of Alberta cites the industry’s own publications that show up to 60% of well casings will fail within 20 years of construction. The list of peer-reviewed independent studies showing problems with the practice is growing but there are still huge gaps in knowledge about health and environmental impacts in particular.

This week it has been revealed that Germany is following France, Bulgaria and a number of other jurisdictions in Canada, USA and Australia with an indefinite ban on hydraulic fracturing.

New Zealand has too much to lose if large-scale petroleum extraction goes ahead. Our economy depends on quality food production, processing and exporting – why put it all on the line for a few years of income from petroleum exports? When consumers learn that Taranaki farmers are being paid by the oil industry to use their farms to absorb highly toxic fracking waste, our milk and meat will quickly lose its wholesome appeal. But our own health aside – how will our export markets react to the news that New Zealand milk products may derive from Taranaki cows grazed on land that has fracking waste spread over it?

Taranaki farmer spreading drilling waste across paddocks before planting grass and grazing cows on it. [Source: Taranaki Regional Council monitoring report]

Mr Robinson said it’s time we had a reasonable conversation about the future of the oil and gas industry in New Zealand. Let’s just make sure the conversation is based on the full facts.


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Categories : Drilling, Healthy Tairāwhiti, Onshore Mining, Prosperous Tairāwhiti

Petrobras Wall of Shame 2011-2012

18 02 2012

I’ve decided to keep a running record of a few of the serious incidents Petrobras has been associated with in the last year or two – these are just the ones we hear about…

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FEB 2012:

- 30 barrels spilt from a Petrobras rig off Rio on 13/2/12.

JAN 2012:

- 160 barrels of oil leaked from Petrobras platform offshore from Sao Paulo

DEC 2011:

- Brazilian navy fuel barge sinks in Antarctica with 63 barrels of Petrobras produced fuel onboard, incident hidden by four government ministries responsible for the Antarctic mission

- death of another Petrobras employee and injury of two others in a Boxing Day accident on the PUB-03 oil rig in offshore waters in Rio Grande do Norte state, northeast Brazil

- fire on the same day at its Duque de Caxias oil refinery in Rio de Janeiro are just the latest in a series of deadly incidents and accidents earlier in the year. The refinery is already the subject of a criminal investigation launched by the Federal Police Department of Environment and Heritage after tests carried out by technicians from the State Environmental Institute (INEA) and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RJ) on a nearby river found high levels of pollutants during December 2010 and in August of this year. A spokesperson for the Police said the material dumped in the river violated the limits set by environmental law.

NOVEMBER 2011:

-      a spill from a project co-owned by Petrobras and Chevron spewed 3,000 barrels of oil into the sea and took a week to get under control. Local government authorities have taken a civil lawsuit against the polluters claiming US$11billion in damages.

AUGUST 2011:

- a Petrobras worker was killed and his colleague badly disfigured from a refinery explosion in Argentina that was similar to another fatal accident two years earlier.

MARCH 2011:

- A major incident in the Gulf of Mexico involved a deep sea riser coming loose with a 130 tonne buoy narrowly missing another rig as the company prepared to start the first new extraction since the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Had the break happened a few days later when oil had started pumping, analysts claim it could have resulted in a disaster similar to the BP oil leak in 2010.

DEC 2011:

- An article in the Washington Post quoted engineers worried about the risks of a technology still being tested. Ricardo Cabral de Azevedo, a petroleum reservoir engineer at the University of Sao Paulo who has done research for oil companies in the US, said the industry is worried about the ultimate fail-safe: the blowout preventer, a complex device that slices through pipe to instantly cap a well in a disaster. At BP’s Macondo field, the BOP, as it is known in the industry, suffered compound failures. Azevedo said companies may be pushing the bounds of technology by going deeper than 2,500m or more of water (as is the case in parts of the Raukumara Basin). “It is a problem because all the equipment has to go to higher pressure, and higher pressure may cause failure,” Azevedo said of the BOP. “We really don’t know if it will function.”


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Categories : Drilling, Regional Environment, Sustainable Tairāwhiti

Playing Russian Roulette with the Select Committee

16 02 2012

 

A Gisborne District Councillor has told the Select Committee considering a bill that would regulate the Exclusive Economic Zone that the government was playing Russian Roulette with coastal communities.

Manu Caddie, one of 129 submitters on the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf Bill, was speaking to the Local Government and Environment Select Committee today when he explained that oiled debris from the Rena was now washing up on Gisborne city beaches and a “one pager” of rules for EEZ exploration applications was grossly insufficient.

Mr Caddie said the Bill does not provide details on what the new regulations will be, resources to clean up anything but a minor spill are non-existent and the public should have input on the detail of rules governing exploration and extraction in the EEZ.

“If the Interim Impact Assessment Guidelines become the requirements within the EEZ Act then they omit detailed baseline sampling of the current state of the area where the activity is proposed” said Mr Caddie. “How can contamination be proven if no baseline sampling is provided beforehand? The wording at present is very vague and should be more prescriptive.

Mr Caddie also pointed out that an oil slick is no respecter of jurisdiction and will not stay within the EEZ.

“Local councils and iwi authorities should be given a veto power if there is enough local concern and support for such a position.”

Mr Caddie stressed that the proposed timeframes between when an application is received, must be notified, submissions made and hearings/decisions is far too short.

“Companies could work on an application for many years and communities will have less than three weeks to read, analyse and respond to complex technical reports, Impact Assessments, financial calculations and other application details – so the timeframes should be more like 3-6 months for submissions.”

In response to a question from Labour List MP Moana Mackey, Mr Caddie said he was very concerned about the imbalance in resources.  Mining companies have “bottomless pockets” compared to the councils and communities that will be affected by an application according to Mr Caddie who represents the Gisborne City Ward and is on the committee of a marae near Ruatoria. “The Government needs to provide public resources and expertise, such as university and CRIs, to councils, iwi and communities that wish to make submissions on an EEZ application” said Mr Caddie.

“All the best practice in the world will not be able to ensure deep sea drilling doesn’t go wrong – the Government is playing Russian Roulette with our coastal area. Rena, Montara and Deepwater Horizon have proven there does not exist the technology or resources to contain anything but a minor spill very close to shore under perfect marine conditions.”

Mr Caddie suggested if the Committee had read the report by the National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon disaster they would know it had identified serious systemic problems within the petroleum exploration industry that have still not been addressed. Many of the same companies involved with the Deepwater Horizon spill are active in the burgeoning New Zealand exploration industry.

Mr Caddie said the safety record of applicants needs to be considered carefully and pointed out that Brazilian oil giant Petrobras has had two significant oil spills since November and two workers killed and a number seriously injured in the last six months alone. One of the spills has seen the companies involved taken to court by local authorities for $11billion. BP is in court this month trying to limit their liability to $30-40b and otherwise could face $100b.

Green MP Gareth Hughes asked Mr Caddie if a climate change clause should be included and Mr Caddie agreed with that the suggestion that climate change impacts should be considered for all applications under the proposed legislation.


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Categories : Drilling, Empowered Tairāwhiti, Prosperous Tairāwhiti, Regional Environment, Sustainable Tairāwhiti

A Turning Tide?

26 01 2012

It seems the tide is turning.

The Dominon Post reports that over 300 people participated in a protest on Wednesday in Napier organised by local farmers to coincide with the Apache presentation to the Hawkes Bay Regional Council. Concerned residents in Hawkes Bay have a long and growing list of questions they would like answered by the companies and councils involved. Until satisfactory assurances are provided by independent experts, these citizens and ratepayers are saying they don’t want fracking to happen in their region.

Yesterday I received a copy of the letter from the Christchurch City Council dated 16 January 2012 to the Minister of Energy and Resources requesting a moratorium on fracking until an independent inquiry is completed into the practice. The resolution in the Council was passed 10 votes (including Mayor Bob Parker) to 2.

In the last month more jurisdictions around the world including a number of local authorities in Ireland and the country of Bulgaria have joined France, South Africa, New York State and dozens of smaller authorities across North America in establishing a moratorium or banning fracking completely. Many of these decisions have been endorsed by the local chambers of commerce, medical boards, oil and gas commissions and water catchment boards.

The Labour Party has this week suggested Parliament instigates a ‘robust inquiry’ into the practice in New Zealand – either by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment or the Environmental Protection Agency. Unlike the recent report on fracking released by Taranaki Regional Council, the Terms of Reference for such a study would need wide agreement from experts across a range of disciplines and be at arms length from the legislators, regulators and industry.


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Categories : Drilling, Healthy Tairāwhiti, Prosperous Tairāwhiti, Regional Environment, Safe Tairāwhiti, Sustainable Tairāwhiti

Agitating &/or Appeasing Apache?

25 01 2012

Alex Ferguson from Apache Corporation yesterday said the company did not offer to pay for an “all-expenses trip” to North America for staff from councils in New Zealand. He also said “It is an unfortunate and not a very welcoming situation that someone decided to give this sort of distorted information to be published.”

This doesn’t seem to be the understanding of council staff who negotiated the arrangement and wrote in their report that is on the public agenda for our meeting this week: “TAG Oil and Apache Corporation… have suggested council staff travel to [British Columbia]… Apache Corporation have offered to pay external costs…”

Mr Ferguson implies I made contact with the Sunday Star Times, in fact it was the reporter that initiated contact and asked questions that I responded to based on what was in the publicly available report to Council.

I take no responsibility for how the reporter chose to frame the situation – I think he was misleading but, as Mr Ferguson acknowledges, the situation risks such interpretation which was why I made sure the reporter knew that Apache is not in charge of the itinerary. While Mr Ferguson may commute from Canada on a monthly basis, overseas travel by public servants in NZ is always viewed with particular interest by New Zealanders.

Mr Ferguson confirms TAG has drilled at Tangamatai near Whangara. Of special interest to me is that the resource consent permits the use of the product “Drill-Pro” and allow for four wells to be drilled but the TAG Oil Annual Report 2011 says they have drilled eight stratigraphic wells on the site.

I understand more drilling this week is planned at the Tangamatai property based on what I was told by someone close to the drillers, but perhaps it simply the drilling for the 700-800 explosive charges to be detonated as part of their seismic survey work near Whatatutu.

To their credit Apache Corporation has demonstrated a commitment to meeting with local residents and trying to answer the many questions presented. The proposed trip to Canada would be useful and I have full confidence in GDC staff who are competent professionals with the highest levels of integrity.

Yesterday I was pleased to receive a copy of the letter from the Christchurch City Council dated 16 January 2012 to the Minister of Energy and Resources requesting a moratorium on fracking until an independent inquiry is completed into the practice. I hear a protest has been organised by farmers in Hawkes Bay to coincide with the Apache presentation to the Hawkes Bay Regional Council this week. This month a number of jurisdictions around the world have banned fracking completely. It seems the tipping point may be close.


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Categories : Drilling, Prosperous Tairāwhiti, Sustainable Tairāwhiti

Beyond Petroleum… for good.

24 01 2012

2012 Investor Summit on Climate Risk and Energy Solutions

We have much to thank the oil industry for – that source of energy has enabled humans to achieve all sorts of things that people living 100 years ago would never have dreamed about. I love the fact that I can take my family on holiday to Tauranga and complete the trip in four hours instead of the week or two it would take by horse (if the weather was fine!), I love the medicines, food, clothing and technology that uses cheap oil and gas in their production and distribution processes.

I also know that future generations are going to look back on us in disbelief that we burnt good oil so quickly and carelessly. In light of the overwhelming evidence (well canvased in The Gisborne Herald letters page!) on human caused climate change and peak oil, ‘responsible extraction of fossil fuels’ is quickly becoming an oxymoron.

This is a conscience issue for me, based on the current scientific consensus about the causes of accelerating climate change, I feel I must have some tangible commitment to an urgent transition away from our reliance on fossil fuel toward renewable energy sources.

I currently own a hybrid car that alternates between petrol and electric propulsion. Recently I looked at buying a fully electric car but I could not afford it without adding 40% to our mortgage! I couldn’t help but think that the cost of that electric vehicle, which had been converted from petrol, would be much cheaper if it was more expensive to produce and consume fossil fuels here and overseas. Economies of scale mean that when more people do more of something we usually find cheaper ways to do it.

A recent OECD report estimates New Zealand taxpayers give fossil fuel users around $70 million each year from the public purse. If that is not bad enough, the same report suggests Norway – the country our government suggests we emulate – subsidises fossil fuels to the tune of over $1.8billion per annum. Recent editorials in this newspaper have claimed supporters of investment in renewable energy are proposing subsidies that would be an exercise in ‘government directed disaster’ – I imagine $1.8 billion could be considered a fair amount of government direction.

‎While the government says it is committed to reductions in carbon emissions, it has made fossil fuel production a key part of the national economic development plan. The 2011 Energy Strategy says the goal is to make this country a “highly attractive” global destination for petroleum exploration and production companies.

The Listener’s latest editorial claims “The current infatuation with the oil and gas sector runs the risk that the necessary investment in and support for new forms of renewable energy will be diminished. Of particular concern is that although the Government is rolling out the red carpet to international exploration companies, the enormous potential gains to be made from greater energy efficiency are going begging.”

Last week over 450 global investors controlling tens of trillions of dollars from four continents gathered at the UN for the biannual Investor Summit on Climate Risk & Energy Solutions.

“Climate change is certain to be a major factor in investments for the foreseeable future—perhaps the biggest investment factor of our lifetimes,” said Kevin Parker, global head of Deutsche Asset Management – this bank alone is worth US$4 trillion dollars.

The NYC summit presented a number of notable achievements including a record $260 billion invested in clean energy in 2011 and over one trillion dollars in the past six years. There was a 36% increase in solar power investments alone (reaching US$136.6 billion) in 2011. The highly successful but recently scrapped US Treasury Grant Program paid out around $9.6b over 30 months and leveraged nearly $23 billion in private sector investment for 22,000 projects in every state across a dozen clean energy industries. Investors signed onto an action plan calling for greater private investment in low-carbon technologies and tougher scrutiny of climate risks across their portfolios.

The world is moving towards renewables driven by the inescapable logic of clean energy. Gisborne may have an opportunity to tie ourselves to an outdated, dirty and what many believe irrational industry in its twilight years, or we could, with the support of central government and private investors, be a region that was bold enough to not only recognise the need for sustainable change but actually lead and prosper from it.

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NOTE: The original post suggested Norway subsidised the fossil fuel industry to the tune of $100b, this was a miscalculation using an online currency conversion tool. The figures are from this OECD report: www.oecd.org/dataoecd/55/5/48786631.pdf 

The lower tax rate on diesel provides a benefit of 3,510 million Krone = NZ$664m, the rest of the 2010 figures seem to come out at about 2,053 million Krone = NZ$426m – so close to $1.8b. Thanks to Wayne for pointing out the error, I obviously wasn’t using my currency calculator correctly when I did the original sum. I guess my argument still stands even if it is not quite as compelling! The taxpayer subsidies in Norway do not seem to be decreasing overall, are five times the state subsidies for renewables and most are either static or increasing annually, the only subsidies that decreased in 2010 appear to be the government assistance for seismic testing in the exploration for fossil fuels. 

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Categories : Drilling, Employment, Empowered Tairāwhiti, Local Governance, Prosperous Tairāwhiti, Regional Economy, Regional Environment

East Coast Fracking Questions Register

22 01 2012

This is a list of questions relating to the Apache/TAG exploration plans for the East Coast that I will try to post answers for – feel free to ask any other questions in the Comments Box below to add to the list.

The responses are my understanding at the time of writing and do not necessarily reflect GDC or anyone else’s opinion or position.

The staff report on the proposed visit is available here.

A discussion on Radio NZ Morning Report (23/1/12) about the trip is available here.

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1. Who is the GDC staff member going on the trip to Canada?

Trevor Freeman, Manager of Environmental Services and District Soil Conservator is the staff member that his manager is recommending for the trip. Trevor’s participation is yet to be confirmed, it is a recommendation to the full Council meeting on 26 January and councillors may decide he should not go or that GDC should fund it without Apache assistance.

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2. How are they and GDC going to manage the moral/ethical pressure (subconscious as well as conscious) of being beholden to the oil company that is hosting-paying for them to make such a trip? 

The itinerary will be on the public record once confirmed – and is in fact still open if people have suggested contacts that the group could visit near Calgary, Fort St John and Victoria, BC. Trevor will provide a full report to Council on his return and is expected to establish contacts with regulators and other stakeholders in Canada that should be broader than just those arranged by Apache Corp. By definition subconscious pressure will be difficult to manage, but staff understand that Apache Corp. representatives will be at only a  few of the meetings scheduled – probably only the meetings with their Canadian staff. 

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3. Why to Canada and these parts of Canada in particular?

British Columbia seems to be the area that Apache is most active in fracking – including in 2010 the largest frack job ever completed at that time. It seems sensible to make contact with people there who have seen the impacts firsthand and establish some ongoing connections between us and them as a way to share learning, experience, policies, concerns, etc.

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4. Why is this money being accepted by GDC for just one individual to travel all that way to look at a few examples and talk to just a few people in the world when there’s masses and masses of information and research available to many and from all points of view?

GDC can and will still access as much of the reliable information available online and from various academic and independent sources as it comes to hand. This is an opportunity to see the impacts firsthand, to build networks and build the capacity of GDC staff to understand the process which our district has no previous experience with. I am working on a primer on fracking that collates the most compelling peer-reviewed evidence against the practice to share with my colleagues and the public – assistance with this project would be appreciated!

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5. What could be achieved by the money being used for a panel of widely respected district people (Council, Iwi, other community interests) to independently review all available information and report to the district on all the issues as they apply to the East Coast (and if necessary, interview people by skype, define what trips to observe directly should be made by whom about what)?

This could also be something GDC require Apache to fund as part of any new consents application. Apache has reportedly invested $100million in the project, so they should support a robust investigation process by NZ regulators and the public, and their representatives have made public comments to that effect. 

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6. What is GDC’s logic and rationale for a geotechnical / soil conservation staff member going?

Most of the resource consent applications will relate to disturbance of the soil and discharge to land – there is also likely be water take and possibly discharge to air consent applications and the individual going to Canada is responsible for all these areas as Manager of Environmental Services.

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7. Who initated this oil-company funded trip?

I understand it was recently proposed by the company to staff from the three councils involved (Gisborne District Council, Hawkes Bay Regional Council and Horizons Council). 

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8. What and whose purposes and intent is the trip designed to serve?

My understanding, based on the report going to Council this week, is that the trip is designed to help build the knowledge of GDC staff in relation to Apache Corp. operations in Canada and the regulatory framework employed by Canadian authorities. I guess the company hopes the visit will reassure Council staff who work on behalf of their residents and ratepayers that Apache Corp. is a socially and environmentally responsible company that is regarded with respect in the areas of Canada it operates. My support for the trip will be because it enables our staff to also have direct contact with environmentalists, First Nations representatives, politicians and regulators who may have concerns and even direct opposition to Apache Corp. activities.

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9. What alternative uses of $ oil company offering for: research / review / staff training / were debated/considered – if any?

The trip is seen as a valuable learning opportunity for staff. It is expected that the costs will be between $3-5k and these will be incurred by GDC and then reimbursed by the company. Further staff training, research and reviews will definitely be required and may be funded as part of any consent application and/or funded by Gisborne ratepayers, central government and possibly academic institutions – like Auckland University that next month is hosting a visiting researcher from Duke University that has published papers documenting the dangers of fracking.

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I’ve asked Apache/TAG Oil and GDC staff to comment on the following questions and will post responses if/when they provide them:

What environmental and public health risk assessments are being undertaken before drilling is finally scheduled, and by whom?

What insurance cover will be in effect, covering landowners and GDC, to cover loss of potable water supply due to petroleum contamination, land erosion etc.?

Is a survey of water supply catchment significance, in relation to proposed drilling sites being undertaken?

What would be the proposed method for handling drilling water flowback and drilling waste disposal, bearing in mid the hazardous chemical nature of oil shale or oil source rock detritus?

What engineering measures would be envisaged to prevent long-term corrosion and seismic shock damage to well casing which could result in petro-chemical contamination of aquifers?

What fracking chemicals are expected to be used for oil shale work: BTEX volatiles, barium, diesel oil?

What fracking pressures would you expect to be used if working into oil shale?

At Whakatutu, where do you anticipate that the high volumes of drilling water needed will be obtained from?

Will the well borers used by Tag/Apache test completed cement casing, if ‘yes’, what is the method of testing?

To what depth would bore cementation be taken, from the surface and how many steel liners would be used to below waster aquifer depth?

Would you anticipate using ponding areas for storing flowback water etc. at the drilling site?

If commercial quantities of gas or oil are found, what would be the means for transporting the gas/oil from the drilling site and to where?

Aquifer water in the vicinity of drilling sites should be pre-tested for petroleum contaminants prior to commencement of drilling and reasonably frequently after drilling.This testing should, ideally, be undertaken by an organisation unrelated commercially to the petroleum industry?

In view of the fact that drilling operations are subject to material failures, human error, faulty cement injection and seismic shock damage, what assurance can the petroleum industry give that aquifer contamination will not occur as a result of such factors?

Does Tag Oil/Apache acknowledge that deep drilling and fracking can result in earthquake shocks, as acknowledged by the USA Geological Survey after the series of shocks experienced last year in Northern Dakota, also at a Cuadrilla Ltd. Drilling site near Blackpool, in England, as acknowledged by the U.K. Geological Survey?

In view of the fact that deep drilling and fracking can cause earthquake shocks, is a survey of faultlines being undertaken across the proposed drilling area, in relation to possible earthquake shock generation? ( Ref: Deep drilling and high-pressure injection caused a series of earthquake shock in the Denver, Colorado area, between 1961 and 1966, when toxic chemicals were being disposed of underground, the disposal method then being abandoned due to the earthquakes).


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Categories : Drilling, Onshore Mining, Regional Environment, Safe Tairāwhiti, Sustainable Tairāwhiti

Another Petrobras rig worker dies and no sign of legislation to adequately regulate NZ deep sea oil drilling

30 12 2011

Petrobras Duque de Caxias oil refinery, Rio de Janeiro

Gisborne District Councillor Manu Caddie has renewed his call for the government to suspend the East Coast exploration permit for Brazilian energy giant Petrobras following another death on a rig operated by the company.

Mr Caddie says the idea that Petrobras has a good safety record is a myth.

“The government and big oil lobbyists in New Zealand have claimed Petrobras is one of the safest oil companies in the world. The list of incidents involving Petrobras over 2011 must see it come close to being one the most dangerous employers and polluters on the planet.”

Mr Caddie says the death of another Petrobras employee and injury of two others in a Boxing Day accident on the PUB-03 oil rig in offshore waters in Rio Grande do Norte state, northeast Brazil and another fire on the same day at its Duque de Caxias oil refinery in Rio de Janeiro are just the latest in a series of deadly incidents and accidents earlier in the year.

The refinery is already the subject of a criminal investigation launched by the Federal Police Department of Environment and Heritage after tests carried out by technicians from the State Environmental Institute (INEA) and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RJ) on a nearby river found high levels of pollutants during December 2010 and in August of this year. A spokesperson for the Police said the material dumped in the river violated the limits set by environmental law.

A major incident in the Gulf of Mexico in March involved a deep sea riser coming loose with a 130 tonne buoy narrowly missing another rig as the company prepared to start the first new extraction since the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Had the break happened a few days later when oil had started pumping, analysts claim it could have resulted in a disaster similar to the BP oil leak last year.

In August a Petrobras worker was killed and his colleague badly disfigured from a refinery explosion in Argentina that was similar to another fatal accident two years earlier.

In early November a spill from a project co-owned by Petrobras and Chevron spewed 3,000 barrels of oil into the sea and took a week to get under control. Local government authorities have taken a civil lawsuit against the polluters claiming US$11billion in damages.

“Petrobras is not a model corporate citizen and the new Minister of Energy and Resources should not be allowing it to operate in New Zealand waters” said Mr Caddie.

“Under the draft EEZ legislation hurriedly introduced to Parliament, local authorities have no role in decision-making about proposed offshore drilling and can only make a submission within the short timeframe like everyone else” said Mr Caddie.

“While the politicians and industry have been claiming that New Zealand deep sea drilling will be based on ‘international best practice’ and robust regulations, the draft bill that is supposed to reassure the public and establish adequate safeguards for people and the marine environment contains absolutely no specifics on safety standards, environmental protection or drilling practices.”

An article in the Washington Post earlier this month quoted engineers worried about the risks of a technology still being tested. Ricardo Cabral de Azevedo, a petroleum reservoir engineer at the University of Sao Paulo who has done research for oil companies in the US, said the industry is worried about the ultimate fail-safe: the blowout preventer, a complex device that slices through pipe to instantly cap a well in a disaster.

At BP’s Macondo field, the BOP, as it is known in the industry, suffered compound failures. Azevedo said companies may be pushing the bounds of technology by going deeper than 2,500m or more of water (as is the case in parts of the Raukumara Basin). “It is a problem because all the equipment has to go to higher pressure, and higher pressure may cause failure,” Azevedo said of the BOP. “We really don’t know if it will function.”

“So we have dodgy companies operating under dodgy regulations using dodgy technology in a dodgy environment – what makes us think New Zealand will be immune from the kind of disasters that are increasingly common under such conditions?” said Mr Caddie.


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Categories : Drilling, Sustainable Tairāwhiti

Learning Lessons from Montara Spill

17 10 2011

While the petroleum industry and government continue to claim there is minimal risk from deep sea oil and gas exploration, a recent oil and gas rig blow-out in Australia produced the equivalent of one Rena spill every day for 74 days in a row.

New Zealand should learn from the Montara oil and gas spill in Western Australia in 2009. A massive slick was released following a blowout from the Montara wellhead platform and continued leaking for over two months. The Australian Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism estimates that the Montara oil leak could have been as high as 320 tonnes per day.

Mr Pfahlert claimed the industry has a spotless safety record, then when reminded of just two recent rig spills in Taranaki he acknowledged there have been more than minor spills in New Zealand. He neglects to also say that Taranaki drills are based in an average of just 150 metres of water. The Raumkumara Basin permit allows drilling in depths of up to three kilometres, the same as the Montara well. The Deepwater Horizon exploratory well that blew out last year was only half as deep.

The Montara and Deepwater Horizon spills suggest, as our Anglican Bishops recently pointed out, that current technology is being pushed beyond safe limits. While there are many deep sea wells being drilled around the world, the risk from deep sea drilling is far greater than the wells New Zealand has benefited from to date in Taranaki. The Raukumara Basin is one of the most geologically unstable areas of New Zealand, the whole plan really is nuts.

The government is rushing legislation to regulate the Exclusive Economic Zone with submissions due this week. The recent major spills, including it seems the Rena disaster, have shown that design, planning and operational decisions cause most spill disasters and it is impossible to adequately regulate against human error. All the regulation in the world can’t clean up a relatively small spill like the one in Tauranga let alone if it had been an oil tanker or well blow out which are thousands of times larger.

The Rena was carrying only around two million litres of oil when it ran aground and only a small proportion of that has so far been released into the sea.

In 2003 the Capella Voyager carrying 126,823,466 litres of oil ran aground near Whangarei and fortunately did not spill its load. If the government’s plans for deep sea oil drilling go ahead, we will see many more large oil tankers operating in NZ waters increasing the risk of another accident.

In 1989 the Exxon Valdez oil tanker also hit a reef. It was carrying 208 million litres and spilled as much as 100 million litres. The effects are still being felt.

East Coast communities have categorically refused to accept the risk being imposed on their coastline and traditional fishing grounds by the government and petroleum industry.

It is pleasing to hear Labour have changed their position on deep sea drilling as the current situation in Tauranga reveals nothing can stop more than a minor oil slick. We can only hope the anger and grief being expressed by Bay of Plenty residents shows the National Party how unacceptable their policy is to coastal communities around the country.


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Categories : Drilling, Regional Economy, Regional Environment, Safe Tairāwhiti, Sustainable Tairāwhiti