Duncan Garner - New Zealand Is Flying Blind on Energy

New Zealand has spent years arguing about oil and gas without properly knowing what sits beneath our own waters. That is not environmental leadership. It is national negligence.

Winston Peters wants to spend $1 billion surveying New Zealand’s offshore geology. It is a staggering figure when households are being squeezed, hospitals are under pressure and the Government is hunting for savings. But the central argument is hard to dismiss.

We should know what we own.

Peters says the country’s current geological knowledge is about 20 years old and “primitive compared to what we should be knowing”. If that is right, we are making billion-dollar energy decisions using outdated information, political instinct and ideological guesswork.

That is no way to run a country.

New Zealand has declining gas supplies, volatile electricity prices and growing concern about energy security. Industrial employers are being hammered by power costs. Households are paying more. Yet we control one of the world’s largest exclusive economic zones and still cannot say with confidence what resources might be sitting beneath it.

Shane Jones argues that international investors want “the quality of the quantitative geological data” before they commit serious money here. Of course they do. Energy companies will not spend hundreds of millions drilling at the bottom of the world based on rough maps and political promises.

They also need confidence that the rules will not change halfway through the job.

That confidence was smashed by the 2018 offshore exploration ban. New Zealand First helped install the government that imposed it, so Peters cannot pretend he has wandered in from another planet and discovered the damage. His fingerprints are on the mess.

But that inconvenient history does not make this proposal wrong.

A serious geological survey would not automatically mean drilling everywhere. It would not transform New Zealand into Saudi Arabia, and anyone selling that fantasy should be laughed out of the room. It could reveal useful gas reserves, critical minerals, geothermal opportunities, carbon storage sites or absolutely nothing.

Even finding nothing would have value. It would end years of arguments being fought with ideology instead of evidence.

The real weakness is the funding. Peters says the money will come from a future fund, but when pressed on the details, he said: “We’ll unravel that during this campaign.”

That is not good enough.

You cannot announce a billion-dollar investment and then become mysterious about the billion dollars. A future fund that appears after the election is not yet a funding model. It is a slogan wearing a suit.

Taxpayers should fund some of the national scientific work because the information would become a public asset. They should not carry all the commercial risk. If the early data reveals serious opportunities, industry must contribute through exploration fees, licensing payments, royalties, levies and direct co-investment.

Oil and gas companies are not charities. If government-funded data gives them a cheaper and safer starting point, they should pay for that advantage.

Peters says, “We pay the money, we pluck the duck.” Fine. Then New Zealand must own the findings, control access to them and secure a proper return if private companies profit.

The survey should also be independent of ministers and built to survive changes of government. Investors will not return while one administration opens the door and the next one slams it shut.

New Zealand has spent too long debating resources it has never properly measured. The greatest mistake is not spending money and finding nothing.

It is never looking in the first place.