October 14, 2016
Lack of social license credited for Statoil rout
A campaigner against deep, sea oil drilling round is celebrating Statoil’s decision to pull out of exploration of the Te Reinga Basin in the far north.
The Norwegian company says after analysing 5000 square kilometres of seismic data, it decided the probability of finding oil was too low to justify continuing the search.
Mike Smith from Greenpeace says while Statoil denies it was pushed out by protests, he believes it’s a mix of a low oil price and adverse political conditions.
"It’s been the lack of social, licence. We've seen iwi in the fair north and hapu oppose Statoil. We've had members of the community all over theplace mobilising, there were thousands of people in the streets at the oil conferences, trips to Norway, the support of the Sami people," he says.
Mr Smith says the visit this month of the president of Norway’s Sami indigenous people would also be a huge embarrassment to the company.
Statoil still has stakes in exploration licenses for the East Coast and Pegasus blocks off the lower North Island.
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