Comment: Oil extraction damaging environment

What do you know about oil exploration and extraction methods in Taranaki ?

Until a couple of weeks ago I had limited knowledge, restricted to seeing the two major company logos on the WOMAD brochure and the oil industry display at New Plymouth's regional museum.

No doubt those of you with family or friends living in Taranaki, or if you know folks who work for the Taranaki oil industry, would be better informed.

At a recent meeting to provide information on the oil industry practice of "fracking", I and about 60 other Whanganui folk found the personal accounts of four Taranaki people very enlightening.

These people's lives and often livelihoods had been adversely affected simply because they lived in the areas from which oil and gas are extracted. Ground water contamination, flare-offs that lit up their and half the neighbour's farm, difficulties with the oil companies, and local authorities that did not appear to take their concerns seriously, were common themes to their personal accounts.

Visiting Taranaki soon afterwards, I bought the March 17th Taranaki Daily News and discovered a full page article entitled "Cracks show in Fracks". The article reported ground water contamination directly underneath blow-down pits which are within a wider exploration site controlled by Shell Todd. While Gary Bedford, director of environmental quality for the Taranaki Regional Council (TRC) and Shell Todd claim there is no link between the fracking fluids used by the company and the contamination, they admit the contamination was first identified as far back as 2004, and has not yet been cleaned up. Hardly good industry practice, I would have thought!

Then Rob Jager, Shell Todd's general manager, went on to tell the newspaper that the company had been exploring better methods of containment, and will be using steel tanks for the upcoming drilling programme.

Particularly interesting to me was the comment in the newspaper that "Taranaki Regional Council has gained a reputation as experts in dealing with fracking and oil industry-related matters".

For this reason other councils, particularly around the East Coast where fracking is now proposed, are seeking advice from the TRC.

Personally I have a problem accepting that TRC has competent experts or enforcement procedures, when by their own admission, contamination remains eight years after it was first detected.

I have also learned that many TRC monitoring reports of oil and gas companies, while stating that "the company demonstrated a high level of environmental performance and compliance", still contained references to breaches of resource consents and things like loss of "power fluid" for two years. Even worse, few of these breaches were followed up with monitoring of their possible effects on the environment.

Add to this the fact that a reportedly comprehensive report on fracking released by TRC last November had a disclaimer stating that the "hydraulic fracturing and geologic information was supplied by the gas and oil industry".

The Christchurch City Council and Hawke's Bay Regional Council are among local bodies asking for either a moratorium or more independent information on fracking and associated oil industry activities. The NZ Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Jan Wright, has announced an official investigation into hydraulic fracturing.

Therefore I suggest you keep asking questions, petition your councils and watch out for "independent" reports that provide unbiased information. You can also attend a local meeting on Wednesday April 4, at 7pm at the Quaker Meeting House, 256 Wicksteed St, Whanganui, for further information.

Graham Pearson is a Sustainable Whanganui Trustee and actively involved in several environmental projects.