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Protest boat (Source: Greenpeace)
By Stephen Benner, PWI Reporter New Zealand

The flotilla of boats opposed to deep sea oil drilling in New Zealand waters has entered the zone in the Raukumara Basin off the North Island coast where seismic testing is scheduled to begin today. Seismic testing ship, Orient Explorer departed Tauranga Harbour in the Western Bay of Plenty last night.

After a powerful welcome and meeting with local Maori tribal members in the Eastern Bay of Plenty at the weekend, skippers of the Stop Deep Sea Oil flotilla resolved to sail out and meet the seismic testing vessel in the protest tradition of “bearing witness” used during the decades of the Nuclear Free Pacific campaign. A local boat has joined the flotilla.

The flotilla’s largest sailing vessel Infinity departed from the East Cape of the North Island yesterday (Sunday 3 April) and sailed through the night to enter the testing zone early this morning. It is expected to encounter the Orient Explorer in the near future.

Greenpeace New Zealand is organising the protest and spokesperson Steve Abel said, “As New Zealanders we regard our coastlines and oceans as national treasures that are much too valuable to risk with oil spills”.

The flotilla’s departure coincides with the leaking of the Government’s Energy Strategy.

“Right as the Deep Sea Oil protest flotilla is fighting for a clean energy future and is determined that deep sea oil drilling does not happen in New Zealand waters, this current Energy Strategy will mire New Zealand into an even deeper dependency on polluting fossil fuels. The Government couldn’t have got it more wrong”, said Steve Abel.

“No one is saying petrol pumps will be turned off tomorrow. Our dependence on fossil fuels won’t end overnight but our investment from now on needs to be in clean energy - not looking for the last drops of oil in the most risky places”.

The Orient Explorer is under contract to Brazilian petrol giant Petrobras to do seismic surveying. The permit was granted by Energy Minister, Gerry Brownlee, to Petrobras in 2010, at the same time as oil was pouring into the US Gulf of Mexico in the infamous BP deep sea oil disaster.

To estimate the size of an oil reserve beneath the deep sea floor, survey ships tow up to ten kilometres of multiple airgun floats that emit thousands of high-decibel explosive impulses to map the geology beneath the seafloor. Seismic surveys have been implicated in harming marine life and migrations, including whale beaching and stranding incidents.

The Department of Conservation states that beaked whales live in the Raukumara Basin where the testing is to take place. Those on the flotilla are opposed to all aspects of the deep sea exploration and drilling programme.

-- by Stephen Benner - PWI Reporter New Zealand - new.zealand@peoplewebinternational.com

Update – Protests Temporarily Stop Oil Exploration Off New Zealand Coast
By Stephen Benner. Further to the earlier article on oil exploration protests … exploration has stopped in the meantime because of those water-borne protests by a flotilla of boats co-ordinated by Greenpeace.

For the 12,000-strong Maori tribal members of the East Region of the North Island East (Te Whanau a Apanui), last year's announcement of the Brazilian company Petrobras' exploration intentions coincided with the deadly explosion on the Deepwater Horizon exploration well in the Gulf of Mexico.

Fearing impacts on their inshore fisheries in the event of a Gulf-style oil spill anywhere out to 110 kilometres from shore, the tribal leaders put out a national call for support.

It was that call, says Greenpeace, that led to last week's brilliantly choreographed protests, which have temporarily stopped the Petrobas ship Orient Explorer from operating.

"Apanui put out a call to the rest of the country. We responded to that. We're not here strategically," says Greenpeace New Zealand's climate change campaigner Simon Boxer.

It appears that the fear of both the NZ Government, embarrassed because it invited Petrobras here, and the New Zealand oil exploration lobby, is that last week's actions will be enough to send not only the Brazilians, but other would-be explorers packing.

Under a locally conceived, two-pronged "No New Coal or Oil" campaign based on Greenpeace International's opposition to the ongoing use of fossil fuels, Greenpeace New Zealand has focused protest not only on Gulf of Mexico-style accidents, but also on the extraction of any more hydrocarbons at all.

One of their key complaints is that the offshore economic zone around the coastline of the entire country is being opened up to exploration before regulations are in place to govern activities like deep-sea mining.

"The process has been wrong from the beginning," says Simon Boxer, suggesting the Government would be doing Petrobras a favour by revoking its permits. "They (Petrobras) would probably be quite glad if it could be suspended for a while." He said from Opotiki (near East Cape) : "The opposition here is extraordinary. Everyone's united and determined."

In the overall scheme of things for Petrobras the Raukumara Basin exploration is, at best, a long shot, and whether the unwelcomed Brazilian will be determined to keep exploring in the face of such opposition remains to be seen.

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