New Zealand is a Total Shit Show
Calls for taxpayers to fund oil and gas exploration!
Oil and gas lobby asks government to underwrite fossil fuel exploration, minister 'considering options'
The oil and gas lobby has asked the government to underwrite the risk of fossil fuel exploration, with the taxpayer potentially taking "some or all" of the risk if new gas supplies fail to eventuate.
Resources Minister Shane Jones says he is considering options to support gas exploration, but "no decisions have been made either way".
On 8 July, the body representing oil and gas producers, Energy Resources Aotearoa, wrote to Energy Minister Simeon Brown saying the industry was unlikely to invest in exploring for new gas without "government support to help manage risk".
It said the government should consider whether the taxpayer should take on "part (or all) of the risk if natural gas should not be produced" by exploration efforts.
The letter - which was released to RNZ under the Official Information Act - said any costs to the government from underwriting, hedging or guaranteeing oil and gas exploration would "fairly and most efficiently" reflect the risk created by Labour's now-reversed 2018 ban on issuing new permits for offshore oil and gas exploration.
The government has also blamed Labour's ban for declining gas supplies, saying it worsened the investment environment for companies that might have wanted to explore.
Meanwhile… the faction from DelusiSTAN weighed in:
She said underwriting or subsiding oil and gas development was "deranged" and the best way to lower household energy bills was investing in renewable energy. Source
The Punchline:
What has changed is that all the extra drilling hasn't turned up much extra gas in the past few years. This is despite record amounts spent on new wells - nearly $1.3 billion between 2020 and 2024. Energy companies now think there's less gas than previously thought. Source
New Zealand is fucked. When investors get wind of what is going on in that country, they are gonna sprint for the exits. Anyone reading this from New Zealand - leave now.
AT THE END OF TECHNOLOGICAL HUBRIS
There’s a fair chance that this might be the last article published here in 2024.
That being so, I’d like to start by thanking you for your interest and participation in our discussions during the year, and wishing you a very merry Festive Season and a happy and prosperous New Year.
Until quite recently, the idea that the global economy might reverse – my preferred term is inflect – from growth into contraction lived in the realm of radical and unwelcome theory.
But this has been the year in which theory has been borne out by experience.
Much as astronomers deduce the existence of invisible objects through their gravitational effects on other bodies, we can see the effects of economic inflexion in everything from social discontent and the “cost of living crisis” to deteriorating international relations and worsening financial fragility.
The causes of the ending and reversal of growth can be summed up in the single word depletion.
Fossil fuel energy has been depleted to a point where its material costs, measured here as the Energy Costs of Energy (ECoEs), are becoming unaffordable.
Non-energy natural resources, too, such as minerals, agricultural land and accessible water, have been depleted, as has the finite ability of the environment to absorb the effects of human economic activity.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2024/12/12/295-beans-on-tech/
This is the baseball bat-in-your-face example of privatizing profits (if any to be had at this stage of depletion) and socializing losses (costs.)
Think of this as a candle burning at both ends. One end of the candle is the man made folly of fiat currency and debt. The other end is the phsyical laws of nature governing EROEI with the extraction of hydrocarbons, soil nutrients, water and minerals.
They are burning towards each other. When they meet, they both go out simultaneously.
Then what?