October 01, 2014
Protests putting heat on oil drillers
Greens co-leader Metiria Turei says a protest against this week's oil industry conference may have given overseas companies second thoughs about their investment.
About 1000 people marched up Queen St in Auckland yesterday to Sky City where the conference is being held.
They included many who had been on a hikoi from Te Rerenga Wairua- Cape Reinga against conference sponsor Statoil's 15 year permit to explore for oil and gas off Northland's west coast.
Today six Greenpeace activists disrupted a speech to the conference by Energy Minister Simon Bridges, and Oil Free Wellington draped a banner from the Norwegian oil comapny's Wellington office reading ‘Statoil out of Northland: Stop Deep Sea Oil’.
Ms Turei says from her discussions with oil companies she knows such actions have an effect.
"They don't want to be operating in enormously hostile environments. It makes it enormously difficult for them to do so. It's expensive mining in New Zealand, especially deepwater mining, so these kinds of actions all add to the pressure the companies feel and the more pressure they feel the more likely they are to say it's not really worth being here so they will go, which is exactly what we want," she says.
FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH METIRIA TUREI CLICK ON THE LINK
https://secure.zeald.com/uma/play_podcast?podlink=MjI3MDY=
Copyright © 2014, UMA Broadcasting Ltd: www.waateanews.com