Good news on the climate front: OMV's surrender of its exploration permits in the Great South Basin, announced last December, has finally gone through. But there's other good news as well: from the sudden hole in NZPAM's permit map, they've also surrendered a pair of permits - 51906 (Matuku) and 60091 (Te Whatu) - off Taranaki.
This shows the value of the government's offshore exploration ban in strangling the fossil fuel industry. There are now only five active offshore exploration permits: five off Taranaki, and two off Raglan. And every permit surrendered makes it that much harder for this criminal industry to spread costs to drill the rest, meaning an increasing chance that they too will be abandoned and surrendered. But that's not enough: we need to stop extracting from existing wells as well. Its time to give the market certainty to invest in a fossil-free future and build the renewable generation necessary to electrify industry. And the way to do that is to set a firm sunset date on fossil fuel extraction.
