Good news for the West Coast

Stuff reports:

Australian miner Bathurst Resources has hopes of gaining access to the Escarpment coal mining site by Christmas after receiving final Environment Court approval for the controversial project on West Coast conservation land.

The court’s final approval was granted yesterday. It had said on August 8 that it intended to grant consent to the Escarpment mine on the Denniston Plateau, near Westport. However, the approval may be appealed. An appeal must be lodged within 15 days. …

The Government welcomed the court’s decision, labelling it exactly the type of investment the country needed to create jobs and higher incomes.

The Green Party decried the sacrificing of the Denniston Plateau and its unique landscape and threatened species for an open cast coal mine.

Have you seen photos of the Plateau? It’s pretty ugly to be blunt.

The company was still confident of producing about 180,000 tonnes of coal from Escarpment by the end of June next year, Bohannan said. It would be taken by rail to Lyttelton and shipped from there, and also shipped from Westport to Taranaki for export.

Bohannan said the coal would end up in steel mills and other production facilities in Japan and China mainly. Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce and Energy and Resources Minister Simon Bridges welcomed the decision.

“The Escarpment Mine and associated works are expected to create 225 direct jobs and approximately $85 million each year will go to employees, suppliers, contractors and transport providers,” Bridges said.

“This is great news for the West Coast. The mine will inject almost $1 billion into the New Zealand economy over six years, and provide $30 million each year in royalties and taxes,” Joyce said.

West Coasters need jobs. This will provide them.

On a sort of related issue Stuff reports:

Raglan residents are fuming after learning that a United States oil company is a month away from drilling off their coastline the deepest exploratory well in New Zealand’s history.

Texas-based Anadarko Petroleum Corporation plans to begin drilling the well in 1500 metres of water before December.

Anadarko was held liable, with BP by a US judge for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill of 2010. The company paid BP US$4 billion to settle claims.

Raglan Fishing Charters’ Brian Hooker is worried about the environmental impact on marine life and is threatening to lead a fleet of boats to picket the Anadarko vessel the Noble Bob Douglas when it arrives at the end of next month.

Drilling will be carried out in water 1500m deep at the Romney Prospect in the Taranaki Basin about 100 nautical miles (204km) west of Raglan after the Government granted a licence in 2006.

So the exploration will be 204 km offshore. That is akin to the distance between Wellington and Wanganui.

I also note he licence was granted in 2006. Will Labour condemn the exploration?

The well will be New Zealand’s deepest and comparable to the Macondo well, which spilled an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico during 87 days in 2010 after an explosion that killed 11.

Don’t you love it when media report advocacy as fact. Who says it is comparable to the Macondo well? Is it also comparable to the 39,999 wells that didn’t have a spill?

Mr Hooker is angry no-one consulted the people of Raglan and asked his opinion before the licence was granted.

“People are going to get riled up. They [Anadarko] are going to get a lot of obstruction to that job.”

Anadarko would be in the neighbourhood for a short time but its activities would have a permanent effect, he said.

“It’s going to ruin the seabed and the sealife. It’s going to f…… change the ecosystem on that coast and for what reason? For gold.”

You would think the exploration is happening 2 kms off-shore, not 204 kms out to sea.

The Dom Post editorial is a good read also:

Instead it has been left to industry spokesman David Robinson to point out that Greenpeace’s worst-case scenarios take no account of the differences between the Gulf of Mexico and New Zealand’s waters or the technological developments since the Deepwater disaster. Here, unlike the Gulf, the most likely finds are gas and light condensate, not heavy black oil. Here, the pressure in underwater fields is typically so low gas and condensate have to be pumped out. At Deepwater Horizon oil spewed out. Then, a cap for the well had to be designed and built before it could be deployed. Now so-called “stacking caps” are kept at strategic locations around the world, available to be deployed at a couple of weeks’ notice.

None of that is an excuse for complacency. Immense damage could be done even by a seeping well in a couple of weeks. But nor is it reason to turn the country’s back on an industry that could provide a massive boost to the economy, generate a swag of high-paying jobs and swell stocks of a scarce resource.

Details most would be unaware of.