Mining

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Anti-deepsea drilling petition

Written By: - Date published: 10:22 am, October 18th, 2011 - 41 comments

Sign Greenpeace’s petition against deepsea oil drilling.

Fools rush in

Written By: - Date published: 1:55 pm, October 14th, 2011 - 55 comments

Labour has announced it will put a moratorium on deepsea oil drilling until it’s proven safe. Good. Basic precautionary principle. Clearly necessary given the piss-poor handling of a relatively small spill. Besides, there’s no rush to dig this stuff up. It’s not going anywhere and we can only extract it once. Will only become more valuable over time.

Can we risk a real spill?

Written By: - Date published: 11:29 am, October 13th, 2011 - 30 comments

The Rena disaster has put the spotlight on the environmental risks of National’s deepsea oil drilling plans. Yes, they’re not the same thing. In fact, an oil spill from a drilling platform or one of the ships serving it is more likely than from a freighter plowing into a well-known reef.* And there’s a hell of a lot more oil involved.

Not just one of those things

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, September 9th, 2011 - 25 comments

Interesting to see the truth coming out about the NZ media’s hero Peter Whittall. Pike River was very much Whittall’s baby. 29 of his employees died in the mine he designed and ran. I’d be interested to hear from a journo the story of why the NZ media chose to portray this as an unavoidable accident, and exonerated the company from the start.

A politician makes promises; a leader keeps them

Written By: - Date published: 12:21 pm, September 7th, 2011 - 25 comments

“Just keep to your promises. I was at some of the family meetings where you promised off camera to parents who were in tears that you would do your utmost to try to get the men out. Money was not a problem. Those same parents have gone home and cradled their kids that are crying. Do what you say and just pull your finger out and do it.”

Labour’s awesome mining policy

Written By: - Date published: 11:48 am, August 22nd, 2011 - 43 comments

Pike River had lax safety systems. Profits came first. The workforce was highly casualised to weaken the bargaining power of the union. The boss, Peter Whittall, will end up getting the blame. Labour says it will restore miners’ power over their safety by bringing back check inspectors. It’s now up to the Nats to explain why they won’t.

Bring back check inspectors

Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, August 18th, 2011 - 30 comments

Nats have announced 6 more DoL safety inspectors for mines and oil drilling. Up from 2 now (only one position filled). Sounds good but DoL’s failure at Pike River was systematic, not just about numbers. Where’s the stronger safety standards? Why aren’t they bringing back worker-elected check inspectors? The miners want them. Why don’t the Nats listen?

Another deregulation fiasco

Written By: - Date published: 7:28 am, July 14th, 2011 - 36 comments

A former chief inspector of coal mines yesterday told the Pike River inquiry that the underlying cause of the disaster was the weakening of mining regulations in the 1990s.  Yet another example of the frequent and costly failures of deregulation.  RIP the Pike River miners.

Frack off

Written By: - Date published: 8:19 am, July 3rd, 2011 - 41 comments

Bravo France, the first country in the world to ban fracking.  But for every step forward in this world, we seem to take two steps backwards…

Salt in the wound

Written By: - Date published: 12:25 pm, June 30th, 2011 - 81 comments

Two years ago, this government sparked the biggest protests in a generation when it tried to open up the most precious parts of our conservation estate to mining. The policy got canned but the agenda has continued below the surface. Now, 100 DoC staff have been sacked while the MED unit for oil drilling and mining will nearly double its staff.

When will we learn?

Written By: - Date published: 11:35 pm, June 15th, 2011 - 8 comments

Fascinating programme on TVOne Sunday this week – see it here and here – contrasting the Australian approach to mining with the disaster at Pike River. The key difference was the existence of union safety check inspectors. Australia use them, we don’t.

Mining II: The Empire Strikes Back

Written By: - Date published: 7:53 am, June 11th, 2011 - 52 comments

A little over a year ago the biggest single protest march in this country since 1938 put the final nail in the coffin of the Nats’ amateur hour plans to mine our most precious conservation land.  Or so we thought…

Worth a crack Nigel?

Written By: - Date published: 8:46 am, April 15th, 2011 - 22 comments

Even the supporters of Deep Sea Oil Drilling admit it is risky. Like the two rats in the old advertisement discussing the odds of going for a cheezel set in a trap, Petrobras and the Herald editor discuss the advantages of Deep Sea Oil, in the columns of the Herald.

Stop deep sea oil

Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, April 12th, 2011 - 138 comments

Protest action by Greenpeace has disrupted prospecting activities in the Raukumara Basin by Brazilian petrochemical giant Petrobras.  John Key has come out swinging for Big Business, and wants to send in the navy to sort out the protesters.  But Greenpeace has it right.  We shouldn’t be drilling for oil…

Stop deep sea oil in NZ

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, March 26th, 2011 - 42 comments

Jenny argues that with the ink barely dry the new Foreshore and Seabed legislation is beginning to have effects. Oil drilling companies are rushing to take advantage. She argues that the Maori Party’s support gives the mining and oil companies the confidence they need to proceed with their plans to exploit the Seabed and Foreshore.

Don’t abandon Pike River recovery

Written By: - Date published: 10:44 am, January 26th, 2011 - 21 comments

Good news for families of the Pike River miners. The Police have shown them video proving their mens bodies are still intact. It raises questions about the government’s actions. Why was this footage previously withheld? Why were the Nats spinning that there was nothing left to recover? And why was the recovery really abandoned so hastily?

Pike river facts needed

Written By: - Date published: 11:58 am, January 20th, 2011 - 27 comments

The dearth of solid information on the Pike River situation and the contradictory statements from the government have naturally led to suspicion that we’re not being told the whole story. The government has been caught flat-footed by the blowback. Now, finally, the Police are going to release their technical information, allowing independent assessments.

So, it is about cost?

Written By: - Date published: 6:45 am, January 17th, 2011 - 207 comments

You would think that, to reassure the families and satisfy critics, the government would have released detailed technical analysis showing why re-entering Pike River will never be possible. Instead, we got vague, contradictory statements only after the media pressed Key for answers. Now, a mining expert has confirmed the mine’s atmosphere is stable and can be made breathable cheaply.

A failure of leadership over Pike River

Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, January 15th, 2011 - 115 comments

Like smiling and waving, frowning and looking sombre, is easy. But satisfying the expectations you create can be hard. This is where Key consistently fails. He has failed again over Pike River. The sudden and inadequately explained end to the recovery operation is bad enough. Lying about the promises he made is gravely insulting.

Why didn’t the warning sound at Pike River?

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 pm, January 6th, 2011 - 44 comments

I never, ever thought I would say this but there’s a very good article in Investigate this week. It’s about the Pike River disaster. With methane sensors in place, alarms should have gone off well before the gas reached combustible level. Investigate reveals the sensors may have been disabled by workers who would lose pay if they had to stop work.

Exploiting disaster

Written By: - Date published: 11:47 pm, December 16th, 2010 - 33 comments

It’s a tough Christmas for far too many Kiwis. Poverty is up, wages are down. 350,000 Kiwis are jobless or underemployed. The job losses are still coming. The rich got tax cuts, 70% got nothing. Drought is spreading. Thousands of Cantabrians face an uncertain future. Meanwhile, the Nats cynically exploit disaster to advance their agenda.

The dead and the living

Written By: - Date published: 8:48 am, December 15th, 2010 - 37 comments

As a government and as a country we honoured the Pike River dead, as was right and proper.  But now the hard part starts.  What are we going to do for the Pike River survivors?  The families who lost loved ones. The fellow workers who have now lost their livelihood.

A Stupid Business

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, December 9th, 2010 - 9 comments

The Commissioner for the Environment’s “Lignite and Climate Change: The High Cost of Low Grade Coal” has been released today. Its release had been postponed because of concerns that it would become entangled with reports concerning the Pike River Mine disaster.

A hero – really?

Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, December 6th, 2010 - 41 comments

The modern urge to label leaders who perform adequately during an emergency as ‘heroes’ astounds me. Particularly in the case of Pike River. Peter Whitall is a boss who just had 29 workers die on his work-site. While reserving judgment on his blame for that, I’m not going to call him a hero for doing a decent job for the cameras.

McCarten on Pike River

Written By: - Date published: 9:59 am, December 5th, 2010 - 64 comments

This piece by Matt McCarten has already generated some discussion on Open Mike.  Here are extracts, or click through for the full article.  Matt pulls no punches…

Pike’s interference could compromise investigation

Written By: - Date published: 10:27 am, December 4th, 2010 - 75 comments

Pike River Coal has been pushing for access to investigation interviews.

This kind of interference needs to be stopped before the investigation is compromised.

2 minutes silence at 2pm

Written By: - Date published: 8:09 am, December 2nd, 2010 - 11 comments

PM John Key has called for two minutes of national silence today at 2pm, to remember the 29 miners who lost their lives at Pike River.

Sickening attempts at political-point scoring

Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, November 29th, 2010 - 64 comments

It’s dismaying to see a few rightwing commentators using the Pike River disaster to attack restrictions on mining in national parks. The claims are baseless and crassly opportunistic. One expects the like of Matthew Hooton, Whaleoil, and Paul Holmes to try to score political points off tragedy but I thought better of Fran O’Sullivan.

Armstrong on Pike River

Written By: - Date published: 11:27 am, November 27th, 2010 - 71 comments

As the public and private mourning for the Pike River 29 continues, focus will begin to shift to how this event occurred with no less than five inquires soon to begin. John Armstrong has a very good article on the issues that will be in the spotlight. This is not about political point-scoring, it’s about preventing future tragedies. I ask for comments to be in that vein.

3:44pm one minute silence

Written By: - Date published: 3:39 pm, November 26th, 2010 - 14 comments

Pike River chief executive Peter Whittall has called on the country to mark one week since the West Coast mine exploded with a moment’s silence at 3.44pm today, in remembrance of the 29 men who died

A sad day

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, November 25th, 2010 - 10 comments

It’s an incredibly sad day for NZ. Today the country mourns for the 29 miners who have lost their lives after a second explosion at the Pike River mine. Our thoughts are now with the families, the communities, and the people of the Coast. The Standard will keep its half mast headlined all day today. Anyone wishing to donate to help the families of the miners, the details are here.