New Zealand Celsias

If timing is everything, it seems the New Zealand Government has not quite mastered the art.

A day after BP admitted its fourth attempt to halt the gush of oil from its ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico had failed, Minister for Energy and Resources Gerry Brownlee announced the decision to grant an exploration permit to Brazilian oil giant Petrobras to drill for oil off the East Coast of the North Island.

The USA’s greatest environmental disaster aside, digging for anything is a touchy subject at the moment – the 35,000 submissions to the Government’s proposal to open up areas of national parks to mining just one indication of the depth of feeling.

So what did the nation’s media make of the news?

Although most acknowledged the diasterous timing, any negative response was balanced somewhat by excitement over the potential economic benefits offered by the entry of Brazil’s largest company into the Kiwi economy.

It is the first time a permit has been granted for exploration of the Raumukara Basin, an area of 25,000 sq km area off the North Island’s East Coast. Petrobras have been awarded a permit for 12,330 square kilometres within the basin, extending from four kilometres to 110 kilometres off the New Zealand coast.

TV3’s political editor Duncan Garner echoed the thoughts of many when he described the timing of the announcement as “awful really.” Now into its 45th day, the rupture of BP’s Macondo well has already seen an estimated 150 million barrels of oil spilt into the ocean with no end in sight.

Timing aside, Garner was enthusiastic, describing the entry of the Brazilian behemoth as “really good news for the New Zealand economy” heralding jobs, royalties and new taxes. Reading between the lines, he saw it as signalling a “significant but subtle shift” by the Government from drilling and exploration towards economic development – and a potential backdown over its mining proposals later this month, especially in the Coromandel and Great Barrier Island.

The Government received $965 million in taxes and royalties from petroleum in 2009.

Radio New Zealand’s environment reporter Ian Telfer was a little more circumspect. Though the timing had undoubtedly “raised a few eyebrows”, Telfer said the project had been long in the planning, starting in December 2008 and only now reaching fruition.

The sums he described were more detailed than the round figure reported by other stations. In its first year the company will spend US$5 million on gathering seismic data and then a further US$7 million the year after. If the exploration proves successful, it will then spend US$106 million to drill one well.

“It’s a potential rather than a guaranteed result,” he told Mary Wilson of the station’s Checkpoint show.

The National Business Review claimed first dibs on the story, saying it had ‘foreshadowed’ the announcement in its previous edition. The paper followed Brownlee’s line which described the permit as an "exciting step" into unexplored areas of New Zealand and a “major step foward” in New Zealand’s relationship with Brazil, the world’s eighth largest economy.

“Unlocking the potential of the country's frontier basins would be important for all New Zealanders - bringing more jobs, more tax and royalty income, and opportunities for long term regional development, said Brownlee.”

Someone at the New Zealand Herald also obviously had a tip off, the paper’s Tuesday edition pre-empting the embargoed news with an editorial which documented BPs failings and called for extreme care in future exploration efforts.

“In terms of oil exploration, the Deepwater Horizon's legacy must surely be a re-evaluation of safety programmes.”

While remaining objective in its coverage, the paper gave some air time to those with envrionmental concerns, reporting both the Environmental Defense Society’s and Greenpeace’s stance on the matter.

“Greenpeace said there was simply no place for oil exploration here in the 21st century considering the environmental risks and the need to steer energy production in the direction of clean technologies.”

Petrobras have given their word they will be careful but, as reported by TV3, the company doesn’t have a squeaky clean history. In 2001, an oil platform owned by the Brazilian company - one of the biggest oil platforms in the world - sank in the South Atlantic. Ten crew were killed and more than 1.5 million litres of oil onboard spilled into the ocean. It said the site for the drilling will, somewhat controversially, be in the vicinity of White Island, a “treasured marine reserve.”

The broadcaster also reported on the Green Party’s call for the Government to put offshore oil exploration on hold until the exact cause of the BP disaster was identified and prevention methods for similar catastrophes had been found.

However, pre-empting the expected criticism, the Government followed up the permit news by saying it would make an announcement later today regarding new legislation to provide environmental safeguards for deepsea drilling.

Watch this space.