captain arrested

The arrest of the captain of an indigenous owned boat, whilst exercising customary rights of fishing within tribal waters, by the NZ Police with the assistance of the NZ Navy, in defence of petrobras is nothing short of outrageous and wrong. They are defending the expoilters against their own people.

Elvis Teddy, the captain of San Pietro, the iwi owned boat, has been "charged with operating a vessel in unsafe manner under section 65 of the Maritime Transport Act." The charge will be defended and it will be interesting to watch the crown case fall apart.

NZH

After repeated warnings the three other boats moved away but the San Pietro stayed and deployed buoys and fishing lines in the path of the survey ship, causing "grave safety concerns" for the ship's master, Superintendent Bruce Dunstan said.

The San Pietro was stationary and 1.5 nautical miles from petrobras's Orient Explorer. It is the repeated warnings bit that they don't like, nevermind the law of the sea. This escalation is a bad sign - for the authorities - it shows they are floundering, it shows they are desperate and it shows us what we must do - support this action and the people on the water in any way we can.

Hone has come out with a strong statement

MP Hone Harawira is calling the arrest a disgrace. Harawira says no New Zealander challenging the right of a government to deep sea oil drilling should have their own warships come speeding over the horizon to arrest them.

Good stuff Hone, and

The San Pietro belongs to East Coast iwi Te Whanau a Apanui. The iwi say they were exercising their customary right to fish in the area. Independent Te Tai Tokerau MP Hone Harawira is furious at the arrest. Mr Harawira says it is a disgrace Defence Force personnel helped arrest the man yesterday. He says it is wrong for a New Zealand citizen to be threatened by the military for opposing a deal between the government and a foreign oil company.

Mr Harawira believes it is a make or break situation for the Maori Party, and he is urging the party he left recently to walk away from National.

This is very good - the leadership and mana of Hone is really starting to shine. And we will need strong leadership to stop these expoilters.

the sounds get an oil well

Well it doesn't take long or maybe it is just fate. Sure this isn't within one of our national parks but it is bloody close. News that drilling just out from D'Urville Island is starting, beggars belief. This area is so beautiful and so precious. Of course the drillers say 'No problem' but isn't that what BP said?

From stuff

"Australian company AWE is about to drill a well close to the Marlborough Sounds, targeting a prospect that could hold up to 100 million barrels of oil, after drilling three duds in Taranaki."

The Tuatara-1 well is about 10 nautical miles (18 kilometres) west of D'Urville Island and about 45km north-east of Nelson. It will take up to a month to drill, starting within the week.

"We will do everything in our powers to make sure we don't have any adverse reactions there," AWE corporate development manager Garry Marsden said yesterday.

"But we are conscious we are in a very environmentally sensitive area there," he said.

Greenpeace campaigner Simon Boxer said the plan to drill close to the Marlborough Sounds was "quite alarming" in an area known for its tourism, recreational and commercial fishing and aquaculture.

"It is a concern, because this is taking place before [Environment Minister] Nick Smith has put together any new health and safety and regulatory structure" for the oil industry, he said.

The review of practices relating to offshore petroleum and mining activities in New Zealand's exclusive economic zone aims to make sure they are up with international best practice.

"Given the lessons of the Gulf of Mexico are still unknown ... it shows us we know very little about frontier deep water [drilling]," Mr Boxer said. Oil drilling was going ahead when it was unclear if a major oil leak could be stopped.

Drilling in this place is not on. Until the lessons from BP and the whole industry are cleaned up then drilling should stop. Just think what an incentive to tidy up their dirty industry having no holes would give them. Too much is at stake, too much that could be lost. Have tangata whenua been consulted? How close to Stephen's Island and our tuatara's is this well? Isn't there a fault line under there? Who signed off this madness?

light your fire

I like the idea of fires of warning on the beach. It is a traditional method of saying something is wrong, and that is exactly the tone needed when discussing the attempts to mine and find oil and gas reserves off the coast. The fires want be lit and be lit they will be.

Fire Alert

Fires on the beach - fire in our heart

From NZH

"East Coast Maori will light fires to symbolise their historic occupation along the coastline tomorrow in a protest against potential oil drilling by Brazilian giant Petrobras."

Go home Petrobras - there will be no massive exploitation and profit from these fair islands

gerrymonster says sorry for forgetting maori

Classic comedy - tragicomedy that is, from gerry brownlee.

he has been forced to apologise to iwi for announcing and doing the deal with the multinational oil company to pave the way for their exploitation of our natural resources, without consulting with MAORI.

He forgot that maori have a say in the area he has sold off. or did he forget...

From TVNZ

"It's an oversight on my part, I must confess, that they weren't consulted sooner. But part of the difficulty we have is some of the commercial sensitivity that goes around these things," says Brownlee."

An oversight - oh that's okay then - this shows the attitude of brownlee - maori don't exist for him, they are so unimportant that they can be considered an 'oversight'.

"The Minister says he will try to liaise with iwi on permits involving the foreshore and seabed in future.

Well a try is better than not trying isn't it? How about this gerrymonster, how about respecting tangata whenua before they bite you on the bum. This deal is a bum-deal in many ways.

Let's stop this foul destruction before it starts and let's send a clear message to gerrymonster and this exploitive oil company that this country doesn't sell it's taonga, it's natural resources and it's future for money.

tarred and feathered are us

I am opposed to this permit to drill for a multitude of reasons. It won't create many jobs, the money mainly goes offshore, it is environmental brutality, it is too risky for this country, and we should be looking to sustainability not continued digging and drilling. So brownlee and key sell us out to a multinational oil company - we are the suckers being used to help them all make more money.

From NZH

"International oil giant Petrobras has been awarded a five-year permit to drill for oil off the North Island's East Cape.

Energy and Resources Minister Gerry Brownlee said "Given Petrobras's expertise, and financial and technical pedigree, this is an exciting step into areas of New Zealand until now unexplored."

The permit awarded to Petrobras covers 12,333 square kilometres.

So while the world looks on in horror at the destruction caused by drilling for oil - what does gerry brownlee do? - he puts in head in the sand and pretends it isn't happening and cannot happen here.

What an absolute idiot - we know brownlee isn't the sharpest knife in the draw - but here he has proven his mettle - he hasn't got one.

Other horrified people include

"Greenpeace last night labelled the agreement "a bad joke".

Climate campaigner Simon Boxer said it was "unbelievable" that the Government was pursuing deep-sea drilling.

"The BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico shows that it is extremely difficult to control activities in the deep sea."

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman said the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe was "game changing" for deep-sea drilling.

"The inability to control it is demonstrated live on the internet every day.

"Things have changed, and nothing is going to be the same for deep-sea oil drilling ever again."

Footnote - And isn't it interesting that as obama puts a six month freeze on oil exploration brownlee and key refuse to accept what he has accepted, that is

"Where I was wrong was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios," he said. "It just takes one to have a wake-up call."

"... he was ordering a six-month freeze on the opening up of the remote waters of the Arctic to oil exploration and on the drilling of 33 deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Proposed lease sales off the coast of Virginia and in the western Gulf would also be cancelled."

The US president said he was calling the pause to plans by Royal Dutch Shell to begin drilling exploratory wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, after studying an interior department review of the Deepwater Horizon disaster."

We are going to have to stop this.

oil spill disaster

Photo by Chris Twomey / Australian Greens, courtesy of WA Today

This is a bad leak.

"The Greens have been highly critical of the government's handling of the oil spill, which has been leaking for more than two months into the Timor Sea.

Equipment failure has caused further delays in the attempt to plug an oil well that has been leaking for more than two months into the Timor Sea."

This is the australian greens but our greens have highlighted it as well.

"The government just yesterday announces it's giving this same company a massive new area for oil exploration in Australian waters," Senator Brown told the Nine Network on Sunday.

"They're rewarding this failure... with further exploration leases."

Hard to believe that they are giving this company more ability to explore.

"The Greens believe anywhere from 10 to 20 million litres of oil has spilled into the ocean since the leak began on August 21.

Oil and gas began flowing from a well at the Montara oilfield, more than 200km off Western Australia's northwest coast, on August 21.

Photo courtesy of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority

PTTEP, a Thai-based company which operates the oilfield, has failed three times to plug the leaking well with mud."

This is an ecological disaster bigger than the exxon valdez. How bad is it?

"The spill is reportedly Australia's worst since offshore drilling began more than 40 years ago.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said the area around the West Atlas drilling rig was "teeming" with marine life, and 16 seabirds had died after coming into contact with the toxic slick.

Biologist Gilly Llewellyn led a WWF survey of the area and said there were times when they watched as dolphins surfaced "literally in a sea of oil".

"Clearly, wildlife is dying and hundreds if not thousands of dolphins, seabirds and sea-snakes are being exposed to toxic oil," she said.

"It's a massive contamination event, it's posing a massive risk to wildlife that is largely confined to sea, that we won't actually see on our shorelines.""

NASA / MODIS image taken from the Terra satellite

and

"Conservationists estimate that the oil is covering an area of at least 5,800 square miles (15,000sq km). "

The risks of putting these types of oil platforms up around our coast is too high. Even the attempt down south is not worth it for the potential disaster that could be caused by inevitable failure - either mechancial or human. i know we already have them - so be it - but putting up more is not the way to go.