Posts Tagged ‘oil spill’

Tauranga oil spill

Written By: - Date published: 10:08 am, April 30th, 2015 - 58 comments

If we can’t even do simple things like refuel safely there is no way that we can guarantee the safety of deep sea drilling off the coast of NZ.

NRT: What happens if anything goes wrong?

Written By: - Date published: 9:36 am, December 18th, 2013 - 30 comments

No Right Turn looks at some of the past history of the company that this government trusts to deepsea drill at 1500 metres off the coast of Raglan.

They are cowboys who have a history of deliberately avoiding cleaning up their messes.

3News lynch mob

Written By: - Date published: 4:41 pm, October 19th, 2011 - 42 comments

Did Hone Harawira call for Steven Joyce to be hanged?  Ahh – no.  Someone at 3News needs to switch to decaf.

Update: 3News – who are very responsive with this sort of problem – have tidied up their reporting of this issue.  Bravo.

The Front Fell Off

Written By: - Date published: 1:21 pm, October 19th, 2011 - 7 comments

Clarke and Dawe on maritime disasters, all good build up to our own home-grown version…

The Rena timeline: capacity and execution

Written By: - Date published: 12:35 pm, October 15th, 2011 - 82 comments

The Herald has produced an extremely useful and detailed timeline of the Rena disaster. It raises several questions that you can divide into two categories: first, did the government have the plans and equipment it needed to deal with a spill and, second, was its response carried out effectively? The Nats know the lack of good answers hurts them.

Pure politics

Written By: - Date published: 11:37 am, October 15th, 2011 - 42 comments

3News reports that: Key dismisses Goff’s oil drilling moratorium as ‘pure politics’.  He’s right.  But not in the way he thinks.

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.

My images of Rena

Written By: - Date published: 1:15 pm, October 14th, 2011 - 20 comments

From my facebook. Some opportunistic bugger is trying to offload their boat. TomScott in Weellington does his cogent best as does the Herald cartoonist. Then there is my favorite (despite its grammar error).

All at sea

Written By: - Date published: 10:35 pm, October 13th, 2011 - 60 comments

* Tupperwaka: $200K per day
* Specialist environmental response vessel: Dunno, didn’t bother buying it.
* Leaving scene of shipwreck/oil disaster to open fake boat made from oil products: valueless

Just me or is he developing a severe list? Could be in danger of breaking up.

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.

Nats drag feet on Rena response

Written By: - Date published: 12:50 pm, October 12th, 2011 - 184 comments

In a depressingly familiar pattern, National is more interested in avoiding responsibility than fixing the Rena disaster. They left it to Maritime NZ. Who left it to the shipping company. Now, the oil’s coming ashore. The promised soldiers didn’t show up yesterday. All the Nats can do is criticise locals for acting on their own.

Laissez-faire disaster management

Written By: - Date published: 9:25 am, October 9th, 2011 - 60 comments

National’s handling of the Rena oil spill is fitting into the same depressing pattern as Pike River and Christchurch – hands off, leave it to the private sector, ministers trotting out excuses rather than leading. We’re even getting the mandatory Key photo-op today, doubtless accompanied by a hollow promise.

Containership Rena

Written By: - Date published: 9:50 am, October 8th, 2011 - 71 comments

The stranding of the Containership Rena on Wednesday morning, occurred in clear fine weather which has persisted for 3 days now. This clear weather is due to deteriorate starting today with a change in wind direction around midday. It is expected that by the middle of the week it will be too late. That before the next calm period the ship will be broken on the reef. What should have been done?

Our own oil spill

Written By: - Date published: 8:07 am, October 8th, 2011 - 15 comments

If we can’t deal with a small oil leak from a grounded ship, what are we doing planning deepsea drilling on a grand scale?

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…

Blowhard and the starry eyed suckers at the MED

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, July 6th, 2010 - 12 comments

There are a lot of risks New Zealand will face when more deeper water off-shore oil exploration goes ahead. The more you look, the greater the risks appear. Brownlee and the crazies at the MED don’t look like they know what a risk assessment is. Consequently they’re getting screwed. Perhaps they should read Gordon Campbell…

A question for John Key on drilling

Written By: - Date published: 3:15 pm, July 2nd, 2010 - 9 comments

With respect to his intention to allow Brazillian oil giant Petrobras to drill offshore in the Raukumara Basin, John Key says that “strong environmental standards” will be in place. I have a question.

Brownlee concerned about safety? Yeah right.

Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, June 22nd, 2010 - 14 comments

The New York Times has a excellent article on the failure of the last line of defense on the sunken Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Even as they are lambasting the regulatory framework that allowed the failure to happen, I’m looking at it and seeing how pathetic our regulatory framework is by comparison. Somehow I don’t think that Gerry Brownlee is capable of making it better.

Dangerously lax attitude to spills in NZ

Written By: - Date published: 11:19 am, June 14th, 2010 - 19 comments

The Deep Horizon oil spill drags on and on and the estimates of the daily leak keep growing. The oil industry has proven itself incapable of plugging an oil well leak in deep water. Yet the government is pushing ahead with deep sea drilling a disturbingly dismissive attitude towards what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico and could happen here.

Dirty oil

Written By: - Date published: 8:14 am, May 30th, 2010 - 38 comments

I knew that disasters in rich white countries get much more media than disasters anywhere else. I knew that oil was a dirty business. None the less, this article on the real costs of cheap oil surprised me.

What could possibly go wrong?

Written By: - Date published: 2:05 pm, May 13th, 2010 - 11 comments

The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico could be stopped with an underground nuclear blast, a Russian newspaper reports. Excellent idea, what could possibly go wrong? That was sarcasm, by the way.

The oil mess

Written By: - Date published: 8:53 am, May 7th, 2010 - 13 comments

We’re in the middle of another slowly unfolding oil disaster. On April 20 the “Deepwater Horizon”, a British Petroleum oil rig, exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and starting what is fast becoming the the largest oil spill in history. It’s an environmental catastrophe. But can we salvage a long term upside?

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