Latest / Best of Business / Shane Jones: Energy Minister on the opening of a new production well in the Pohokura gas field

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Shane Jones: Energy Minister on the opening of a new production well in the Pohokura gas field · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talk ZEDB. Follow
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• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Right now, Shane Jones is celebrating a new natural gas
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  Speaker 2: well in Tartanaki. This is from an existing field. The
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  Speaker 2: poor how Kuda production well should deliver four petidules into
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  Speaker 2: New Zealand's energy grid each year. The Minister for Resources
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  Speaker 2: with me tonight, High Minister.
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  Speaker 3: Jeorder, Greetings folks, So you've.
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  Speaker 2: Been in Tartanaki today. Can you just describe for us
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  Speaker 2: how they're getting at this gas because it's quite interesting.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. The sites called paujor Kudo near the township of
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  Speaker 3: White padda seven and a half kilometers both out and
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  Speaker 3: down into the bed of the sea, extracting from different
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  Speaker 3: cabinist areas usable gas. I today actually stood next to
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  Speaker 3: the seven and a half kilometers of coiled up ill
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  Speaker 3: pipe that has been used.
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  Speaker 2: And it's exit. There's an offshore field, but you actually
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  Speaker 2: access it from on shore using this this big rig.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so they add an infrastructure set up. The main
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  Speaker 3: rig was called Big Bend. Big Ben's done the deal.
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  Speaker 3: Big Bend's moved on, hopefully to a new site with
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  Speaker 3: even better prospects. The infrastructure links the onshore apparatus to
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  Speaker 3: seven and a half kilometers off the coastline and down
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  Speaker 3: on a some of doubt diagonal course. Quite extraordinary engineering
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  Speaker 3: into pockets of gas that are feasible to extract.
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  Speaker 2: Which is good and great. And this is an existing
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  Speaker 2: field we're getting, you know, we're sucking more out of it.
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  Speaker 2: But it's only four petioles that they're going to get right,
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  Speaker 2: and our production is down what more than twenty five percent?
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  Speaker 2: So is this going to make a difference.
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  Speaker 3: Well, there's about three hundred dollars thousand households who rely
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  Speaker 3: on gas. One hundred and forty six thousand households would
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  Speaker 3: be serviced by the augmented supply that Omb announced today.
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  Speaker 3: So yes, it's not inordinately large, But if you live
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  Speaker 3: in one of those one hundred and forty six thousand households,
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  Speaker 3: it's not to be sneezed at.
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  Speaker 2: What about the companies that are turning gas off to
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  Speaker 2: households and saying, no, we're not going to supply it anymore.
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  Speaker 3: Well, let's not hide from the fact. Ever since just
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  Speaker 3: send a sort to can the order and gas industry,
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  Speaker 3: it's had a very negative effect on the sentiment and
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  Speaker 3: gas industry, and we are in trying to invigorate. We
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  Speaker 3: invigorate that and turn it around. We see how gas
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  Speaker 3: works in New Zealand is we need one foundation major
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  Speaker 3: user and that major user is a Canadian company called Methodics,
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  Speaker 3: and they may methanol and they supply it to various
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  Speaker 3: spots around the world. And that's why the CEO was
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  Speaker 3: here recently ensuring that I am senior ministers, including the
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  Speaker 3: Prime Minister, understand the gravity of the situation with the
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  Speaker 3: New Zealand gas industry, and he was testing what will
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  Speaker 3: the government do itself to de risk further exploration. So
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  Speaker 3: I'm working on various proposals as to how we can
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  Speaker 3: accelerate both money into the industry and genuine economic activity.
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  Speaker 2: The big hold up is what you do after you've
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  Speaker 2: finished drilling?
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  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, So there's a piece of legislation wending its
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  Speaker 3: way through Parliament and one of the testy pieces of
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  Speaker 3: the legislation is called decommissioning. I after the gas field
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  Speaker 3: is exhausted, what process do you take to remove the
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  Speaker 3: infrastructure that's the pipes and the various other parts of
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  Speaker 3: apparatus that have been sunk into the bed of the
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  Speaker 3: to take out this natural.
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  Speaker 2: Resources, and so who's holding that up.
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  Speaker 3: Well, you may or may not recall there was a
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  Speaker 3: crowd called tamarind who walked away from their decommissioning obligations
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  Speaker 3: four or five years ago. That left a bill of
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  Speaker 3: three or four hundred million in rough figures. So the industry,
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  Speaker 3: you want to make sure that the provisions in the
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  Speaker 3: statute don't disincentivize them from looking for more gass. At
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  Speaker 3: the same time, I've been saying to them, I don't
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  Speaker 3: want to undermine the Crown's balance sheet by leaving too
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  Speaker 3: much of a bill of things go wrong with the
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  Speaker 3: tax fairs.
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  Speaker 2: So this is not about a negotiation between coalition partners.
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  Speaker 2: This is basically between you and the industry.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, obviously I'm a proxy for our group of
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  Speaker 3: cabinet ministers, the entire troka of three parties. We all
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  Speaker 3: campaigned hard to re establish gas as a firming contingency field,
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  Speaker 3: and I except there are other elements in the broader
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  Speaker 3: political community who don't believe guess or coal should be used,
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  Speaker 3: but they belong to the juvenile work tribe, so I
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  Speaker 3: have no time for their thinking.
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  Speaker 2: All right, still believe it there. Thanks for your time.
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  Speaker 2: Shan Jones, who's the Minister for Resources, with us tonight
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