Listen Now: 
Climate Justice Taranaki wants public hearings on exploratory drilling consent applications to drill 12 offshore wells.
The Environmental Protection Authority says it doesn’t need to notify the consents because the wells across six areas licensed to OMV are of exploratory and appraisal nature, but it has notified OMV’s application to discharge harmful substances from the deck drains of a yet to be identified drilling rig.
Climate Justice spokesperson Catherine Cheung says if the applications are dealt with separately it is impossible to assess the cumulative effects of all the drilling and discharge activities on the environment, marine species, human health and existing interests
She says the law requires consideration of cumulative effects.
Ms Cheung says if anything does go wrong, New Zealand does not have sufficient on-site resources to cope rapidly with a major incident, which could affect much of the west coast of the North Island and the top of the South Island.
!["p_facebook"]("/site/uma/images/story_img/facebook.jpg")
& !["p_twitter"]("/site/uma/images/story_img/twitter.jpg")
Copyright © 2018, UMA Broadcasting Ltd: www.waateanews.com
RELATED NEWS
