good writing on risks

A great post  and awesome writing from Tracey Barnett that outlines so many of the risks attached to drilling in the Raukumara Basin. There are so many facts within this post that it boggles the mind and they are presented one by one in a masterful display of good writing. Highly recommneded.

We're pioneers, after all. The oil industry calls us the "new frontier", like Greenland and the Shetland Islands, because nobody was willing to touch our difficult, dangerous and remote deepwater sites with a stick - that is, until the world supplies got tight enough and the money got good enough. Then one day, there is an accident, a huge explosion on our maiden deepwater exploratory well. Several people are killed, but the pain is just beginning...

... Our story may be fiction, but storms, earthquakes, bad oversight, even drunk captains, aren't. Just ask Petrobras. In the past 15 years, its chequered safety record shows it has had 282 deaths from accidents, explosions and fires, and 27 oil rig blowouts since 1980.

Good stuff - let's get the facts out there so that they are known. There are many levels of arguments against this exploitation and all must be used - the environmental, the economic, the risk management, the community, sustainability, facts and emotion and all in alignment with the fundamental right of tangata whenua to their lands.