Do you have a kayak, surf board, small boat, paddle board?

Or are you a landlubber who wants to stop deep sea drilling in our southern ocean?

The Rainbow Warrior is coming to Port Chalmers

Join us on land and water to greet the Rainbow Warrior and send a message to

OMV (Austrian oil giant): No Drilling Here!

The government stopped new oil and gas permits (except for 3 years in Taranaki) – hooray Aotearoa! Great step forward, and the Rainbow Warrior is here to help send a message of hope to the world. But our work is not done. OMV still has an existing permit to drill for oil and gas in our Southern Ocean. We can’t afford to burn most of what is already discovered if we want a liveable future for our kids. We will resist these companies every step of the way.

On land: showcase the fossil free city we are building – OMV: we don’t need you!

At sea: Resist! #endoil #makeoilhistory – OMV: we don’t want you!

More to come! Want to help? Email oilfreeotago@gmail.com

sign up to OFO fb page https://www.facebook.com/OilFreeOtago/

Or ring Rosemary on 0221856966

St Clair Esplanade
11am Saturday 19 May

We are winning – but it’s not quite over!

This year, PM Jacinda Ardern’s government put their money where their mouth is and banned future oil and gas permits. A great start, but it’s not enough. Current permits in our southern ocean have not been banned, and two major oil companies, NZ Oil & Gas and OMV (which bought Shell’s permit this year) are still considering drilling in the Canterbury and Great South Basins this summer.

Scientists tell us we can’t burn most of the coal, oil and gas already discovered and keep below two degrees of global warming. We know that if we are to win this race against time to protect a liveable future, we cannot afford to explore for any more new oil and gas.

It’s time for the oil companies to get this too. If the government isn’t going to stop them, we will.

Please join us as we peacefully draw our human line in the sand to say NO to more oil and gas drilling and YES to a clean renewable energy future.

See you there!
Oil Free Otago crew

PS: “Hands Across the Sand” began in 2010 after the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon disaster and quickly grew into the biggest protest against offshore oil and gas drilling in the world, with over 40 countries participating. Oil Free Otago have joined this event since 2012 when we first began opposing deep sea drilling in our precious Southern Ocean. Let’s kick it to touch this time!

Like Oil Free Otago on Facebook.
Email us to join the fight to #endoil – oilfreeotago@gmail.com

12 April 2018 – Great Work Prime Minister – but don’t stop there…

Oil Free Otago congratulates the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her Government for ending new offshore oil and gas exploration in Aotearoa NZ, and calls for them to go a step further and ban current permits for new oil or gas exploration, including the Barque Prospect off Oamaru.
“Today’s announcement is a wonderful, historic step forward for all of us, young and old. We would like to thank all our supporters over the years who have put enormous effort into opposing Anadarko, NZ Oil & Gas (NZOG), Shell, Beach Energy, OMV and others. This is your day.” Oil Free Otago’s Rosemary Penwarden said.
“Really, it is everyone’s day, because it is a win for the planet, home to us all, a win for the albatross, Oil Free Otago’s adopted logo, and a win for all the sea creatures we have worked for many years to protect from oil and gas drilling.”
The government today announced that onshore oil and gas exploration will continue in the Taranaki region and that current permits elsewhere will not be stopped. That means that exploratory drilling in NZOG’s Barque Prospect off Oamaru and in OMV’s prospect in the Great South Basin, recently purchased from Shell, may still go ahead this coming summer.
NZOG (recently purchased by Singapore-based O.G.Oil & Gas, so not a NZ company) are struggling to find an investor for the  Barque Prospect which they describe as a “game-changer” for the region, emphasising any find is likely to be gas, the so-called “clean” fossil fuel.
“What the industry fail to mention about natural gas are the fugitive emissions or methane leakage that comes from every new oil or gas well.”
Natural gas is mostly methane before it is burned, a very potent greenhouse gas – calculated to be around 86 times more potent than CO2 over a 20 year period. Recent research from Harvard shows that methane leakage from gas production and delivery in the US rose by up to 30% in the 12 years up to 2014. Many studies besides the Harvard one find that even a very small amount of methane leakage from gas wells and transport systems can have a large climate impact — enough to cancel out any emissions advantage gas may have over coal.
“So the timing is all wrong for gas” Ms Penwarden explains. “For a start, it’s too late. It takes up to a decade or more for a new discovery to reach the commercial stage, then the well could produce for many decades, long past the time by which we need to have reached a zero emissions economy. Second, the South Island has no infrastructure for gas. Why would our government and regional councils spend millions now on new gas infrastructure that will be obsolete before it even gets used?
“Third, why invest in drilling for and using new gas when we could be using that money now on renewable technologies?
“Fourth and most important: climate change is here now. We don’t know for sure if we’ve reached a tipping point that will lead to unstoppable climate breakdown, but for NZOG to drill for new gas now is reckless if not criminal.
“If the government is not going to stop NZOG and OMV then we, the people, will. Today we celebrate a historic win. Tomorrow we continue the fight. Let’s hope these companies read the writing on the wall, pack up now and go home. We have an exciting new clean energy economy to build.”

Dunedin City Council Ten Year Plan – make Dunedin fossil free

Dunedin City Council 10 Year Plan Submissions close 12 midday Monday 23 April Book to speak Thursday 26 April 9-1 or Tuesday 1 May 9-12 What will Dunedin look like in ten years? How about a fossil free Dunedin with safe cycleways, warm affordable homes, cooperative working spaces – or worker owned cooperative businesses! How about a Dunedin-style ‘Cuba Street’ pedestrian precinct in the middle of our beautifully restored Victorian district? …Or do we burden future ratepayers with more debt and $20 million bridges? Oil Free Otago and 350 Dunedin made the following joint submission to the DCC Ten Year Plan. We hope you will find a moment in the next few days to make one too. “As the elected representatives of Dunedin, you are at the forefront of the most important time in our history, because climate change is threatening to destabilise everything we think of as familiar. You must put climate change front and centre of the 10 Year Plan.”   There’s still time to submit!   http://www.dunedin.govt.nz/council-online/online-forms/10-year-plan-2018-28-feedback Submissions close 12 midday Monday 23 April Book to speak Thursday 26 April 9-1 or Tuesday 1 May 9-12 The DCC need all our voices to help them make the right decisions now to protect our future ———————————————————————————————————- Joint Oil Free Otago and 350 Dunedin Submission to the Dunedin City Council Ten Year Plan Oil Free Otago is a group of Dunedin citizens who oppose deep sea drilling off our Coast. Instead we support Dunedin’s just transition to a low carbon economy. 350 Dunedin is part of the international climate movement 350.org. We engage individuals, communities, businesses and governments around climate change solutions through grassroots collective action. Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the DCC Ten Year Plan. We wish to speak to our submission. Put Climate Change Front and Centre of the 10 Year Plan Every decision this council makes from here on in must be made with this question in mind: will this help our city mitigate and adapt to our new climate changed world? We are in for huge economic upheaval as the world attempts to decarbonise. We need to rethink our economy, the way we travel, produce food, manufacture and trade. There is no time to waste. You, as the elected representatives of Dunedin, are at the forefront of the most important time in our history, because climate change is threatening to destabilise everything we think of as familiar. You must put climate change front and centre of the 10 Year Plan.   Divest, Defund, De-sponsor In terms of mitigation, we applaud the DCC divestment of the Waipouri fund from fossil fuel exploration. We support your strong stand against the previous government’s Block Offers for oil and gas exploration permits. We urge you to continue your opposition of fossil fuel exploration in our region. We strongly urge you to continue this legacy by now defunding and de-sponsoring from fossil fuels. Fossil fuel companies attempt to gain a foothold and try to build social licence by funding research and other projects in cities where they see there may be a strategic advantage for them. For example, NZ Oil & Gas currently fund the Dunedin Cosy Homes Trust, of which Mayor Cull is chair. This is contrary to his participation in the Global Covenant of Mayors. Oil Free Otago and 350 Dunedin urge the DCC to find another sponsor and funder for this and any other project that accepts money from fossil fuel companies. It is time to take a moral stand against the fossil fuel industry. We also urge the Council to not allow future oil conferences to be held in Dunedin’s council-owned venues. Our vision Dunedin, in ten years, could be a place where everyone has a healthy and affordable place to live, enough (mainly local) food to eat and meaningful work. It could be a place where our children choose to live, work and raise our grandchildren. Where they can walk, cycle or take public transport to get to work, learn and play. It will need to be a city approaching net zero emissions, with an efficient organic waste recycling industry, job opportunities in low cost timber eco-house building, public and private transport industries, building retrofits, solar and other renewable energy industries. The central city, including hospital and university, could be heated entirely with renewable electricity from a flourishing City Forests waste wood industry. Dunedin will be coal free. Our transport fleet will be fully electric and we could lead the country in our electric vehicle conversion industry. Future and current Dunedin ratepayers will be grateful that ten years earlier, our elected city councillors – you – resisted the temptation of a cosmetic spendup designed to attract rich developers and instead had the foresight to prepare for a climate-changed future. Instead of leaving our children and their generation with more debt to accompany stronger storm surges, sea level rise, coastal erosion, increased risk of drought, floods and wildfires, you focused on how to prepare this city for those events. In the process, you subsidised cheap or free public transport, helped kick-start low carbon manufacturing, worker owned cooperatives, local currency and other initiatives so that money stopped leaking out of our local economy and stayed where it was needed. You continued the great work of restoring Dunedin’s ‘Victorian’ quarter, making Lower Stuart St, Vogel Street and the Octagon wheelchair friendly pedestrian precincts where locals and tourists mix and enjoy Dunedin art, music and cafe culture. Build Trust Not Debt All of these things can be achieved alongside a concerted effort to reduce inequality and make Dunedin a city where all citizens feel a sense of community. That sense of community comes from belonging, knowing your neighbours and doing things together. It comes from eliminating the social divide between the haves and the have-nots. It does not come from burdening the next generation with unaffordable debt. Council’s Ten Year Plan major projects We do not support the Council’s preferred option of an architectural bridge. Instead we support separate cycleways and wheelchair friendly linked pedestrian thoroughfares – these may include a modest bridge which could be heritage-style in keeping with surrounding restoration work, while still being affordable. We have no time to waste – we have a city to protect from climate change. We support investment in the central city if this includes wheelchair-friendly pedestrianising of Lower Stuart Street and other heritage streets as suggested. And – let’s not borrow more to do this. Instead of the Council’s preferred option of substantial investment in the tertiary area we support ending slum accommodation for students. That will include an official Warrant of Fitness for landlords and a cap on rent rises. No more price gouging by greedy landlords. Support and encourage good landlords. Further comments We support the DCC taking back the buses from ORC and trialing free bus services from South Dunedin and other lower socioeconomic suburbs into the city. This will help to reduce both pollution and inequality. Other cities around the world provide some free public transport including Melborne, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth. Five cities across western Germany, including Bonn, Essen and Mannheim, will install free public transport by the end of this year, to help reduce pollution. Los Angeles provides a free electric car share system in its poorer suburbs. We support the progressive rollout of e-charging stations for electric bikes and vehicles across the city. We urge increased Council investment, support and engagement in South Dunedin and other more vulnerable parts of the city. We support a moderate progressive rates rise for those who can afford it. They should be related to households’ disposable income. No to more debt. It is borrowing from our kids. Don’t sell off our assets. They belong to the next generation of ratepayers. Thank you Oil Free Otago and 350 Dunedin

Local Body election posters plaster the papers, hoardings speckle the roadside, candidate meetings populate our calendars. Each candidate professes to have answers to our biggest issues, in similar but vague terms, as long as we give them our vote Number One.

But will the next batch of Dunedin City Councillors work to safeguard our future, or sabotage it?

One thing’s for sure; the government doesn’t seem bothered about the future; Energy Minister Simon Bridges’ annual lolly scramble for the oil and gas industry, Block Offer 2017, includes putting 210,884 square kilometres of the Canterbury and Great South Basins up for grabs. Iwi are being consulted as we speak, and local body consultations begin on 17 October.

As in previous years ordinary citizens have been shut out of the consultation, so we depend on our elected councillors to represent our views.

This year, the need to oppose new fossil fuel exploration is even more urgent. A report just published by the group Oil Change International calculates that to meet the Paris Climate Agreement to keep the world below two degrees of global warming we cannot afford any new oil and gas drilling. None.

What’s needed now is a swift, managed decline in the production of all current oil, gas and coal production.

What’s new is this: even the coal, oil and gas in currently producing wells and mines will take us beyond two degrees of global warming. As for new exploration? Ever once dreamed of Dunedin as a Taranaki-of-the-South, or a southern hemisphere Aberdeen? Forget it. You’re fifty years too late.

While the government ignores reality, local councils have got to take the lead.

Last year, as well as formally opposing the Block Offer, the DCC voted to divest from fossil fuel extraction, becoming the second New Zealand Council in the country to divest, joining the worldwide movement to stop investing and profiting from the fossil fuel industry.

Just two weeks ago the University of Otago joined the DCC in committing to be ‘fossil free’.

This is but a small contribution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but the real issue here is a moral one; we can no longer invest, profit from and run our establishments on an industry that is destroying the world, and thanks to these commitments Dunedin can proudly uphold the moral high ground.

Dunedin voters urgently need to know if our next councillors are going to maintain our own growing reputation as a climate leader.

Who to vote for? Oil Free Otago emailed 41 councillor hopefuls last week (two had no email addresses) and received 13 responses, asking:

1. “Where do you stand in relation to oil and gas exploration off the Otago Coast?”
2. “Will you commit to submitting in opposition to the Block Offer if you are elected to the Dunedin City Council?”

Two candidates, Andrew Whiley, spokesman for the industry front group Pro Gas Otago, and Richard O’Mahoney, both support oil and gas exploration and will not support a written submission from the DCC opposing this year’s Block Offer 2017.

Neil Johnstone does not “particularly like marine-based oil operations for environmental reasons” but “cannot commit to or against any proposal that I haven’t had any opportunity to appraise”.

Nine others (Aaron Hawkins, Scout Barbour-Evans, Dave Cull, Marie Laufoso, Islay McLeod, Steve Walker, Abe Gray, David Benson-Pope, Damian Newell and Jim O’Malley) oppose deep sea drilling. Eight of these will support a DCC submission opposing the Block Offer while current Mayor Dave Cull will “commit to expressing the views of the Dunedin community as best we can ascertain them. On the last occasion DCC submitted, the overwhelming preponderance of views expressed by the community was opposed to further exploration and extraction.”

We did not receive replies from the other council hopefuls, but do know the views of current councillors. Here’s how those who are standing this time round voted when the DCC moved to divest its shares in fossil fuel extraction companies last year:

• In favour of fossil fuel divestment: Chris Staynes, David Benson-Pope, Aaron Hawkins, Kate Wilson and Dave Cull
• Opposed to fossil fuel divestment: Andrew Whiley, Mike Lord, Doug Hall and Lee Vandervis

The government has chosen April Fools’ Day 2017 for the new exploration and drilling permits to begin, but no oil companies have even bothered to bid for permits amid the roaring forties and furious fifties of our treacherous southern ocean since 2013.

Last month two oil prospecting companies, ION Geophysical and Houston based TGS, withdrew their prospecting permit applications before they were even approved. Anadarko, which drilled unsuccessfully off Taiaroa Head in early 2014, cut over 1,000 jobs this year, cut their capital spending by half, and asked the government for a permit extension. Shell is showing signs of leaving New Zealand altogether, after delaying its planned exploratory drill in the Great South Basin last summer.

Dunedin voters: let us vote wisely. This is no time for Fools.

PS: In case you haven’t voted, here’s a late response from Mayor hopeful Athol Bayne (who doesn’t seem to have heard that we can’t keep burning oil for 300 more years): Hi, my thoughts are somewhat different from most as while at the moment oil is the primary part of our technology its role must decrease to reduce carbon greenhouse gases and pollution .The dwindling sources of  new oil worldwide and the use of shale oil extraction mean the Great South Basin is unlikely to economic to be exploited before 2050 if New Zealand is prudent. There must however be put in place before exploitation begins a comprehensive plan and working anti-pollution measures need to be in place including putting export controls on usage of the hopefully NZ processed petroleum based products to ensure the lowest possible greenhouse gas emissions are enforced. The current Government policy does not meet these requirements and our existing infrastructure and technology as well as our nations liabilities for search and rescue could become very stretched, as nowhere in the oil exploration world encounters such extreme sea swells  as the southern Ocean.

I will oppose the block offer as it is too soon to be tapping the great south basin oil field and new Zealand needs to plan  the exploitation properly and not run off half cocked taking whatever crumbs are being offered. With proper investigation and planning we can get a much better outcome for New Zealand and once again the current Governments plan for raw procut expot is so lacking in vision we should process the oil here and export with controls a value added product ensuring the most employment for our citizens coupled with rigid environmental protection. Helen Clark’s government also attempted this but luckily the weather proved to extreme to be economically exploitable  and now National is trying the same tired old ploy of not getting best value for new Zealand.There is no hurry and we need to think long term as the great south basin holds in excess of 300 years worth global oil at current rate of usage  and this amount of oil  and green house emissions needs to be both exploited and controlled by NZ for NZ and world benefit as un restricted use would be irresponsible stewardship of this wonderful planet God has put us on. Regards, Athol Bayne

 

Watch out Kiwis! The government TPPA spin machine is winding up. Spin, bias and outright lies are coming at us from the mainstream media, via the National Party machine. Thanks to ActionStation, here are some of the facts to help us sift the truth from the propaganda.

http://www.tppafacts.co.nz/explore-issues/environment-and-climate/

 

Prof Jane Kelsey and Lori Wallach from USA Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch will be in Dunedin to discuss the next phase of the global fight to stop the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement. Get the latest facts from the experts.