OMV has indefinitely suspended its oil exploration campaign off Taranaki:
The future of offshore oil and gas exploration in New Zealand in doubt after OMV announced today it is postponing drilling its Maui-8 exploration well indefinitely due to the Covid-19 crisis.
The COSL Prospector rig, which is contracted to Austrian-based OMV, has just completed drilling the Toutouwai-1 exploration well off the coast of Taranaki, the results of which are due shortly, and was set to drill Maui-8 next.
But an OMV spokesperson said that would now not go ahead and there were no plans to reschedule the work.
"Hopefully next time we have a drilling rig in New Zealand, but currently we have no real plans to bring an exploration rig to New Zealand."
They've blamed this on the difficulty of doing staff rotations during the pandemic, which actually means the difficulty of cheating taxes. But the collapse in oil prices will also be a factor. What's the point in drilling for oil, when the barrel is worth more than what you put in it? But either way, they're done here, and hopefully they won't be back. But if we want to make sure of it, we need to cancel their permits and throw these foreign polluters out forever.
