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Letter
Profits colossal, little trickles down
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of NZ chief executive David Robinson presents the oil industry as a benevolent provider of good jobs and good works but let’s keep it in perspective. The profits oil companies make are colossal and very little of this trickles down to communities relative to what overseas corporations pocket from our resources.

I recently met someone from Canada whose family farmland and rivers have been destroyed by the oil industry — he is doing his masters in law to reduce his family’s legal fees in fighting them. By necessity he has become an expert on all aspects of the industry, including the economics. He takes an international view and wonders why New Zealand is sold “so cheap” in terms of government royalties as well as money paid for land access agreements. He was also amazed that New Zealanders take their most valuable asset, clean water, for granted to the extent that we do not put a price on its worth. Oil and gas production requires copious volumes of water that cannot be returned to the water table. Once it’s used that’s it.

So while the economic debate in Gisborne needs to address long-term job creation and how much if any of Apache Corporation’s massive profits would be returned to the community, it also needs to weigh up the cost to existing industries — in the Poverty Bay Flats area in particular, as the introduction of an oil industry drawing from the limited supply of water there could put companies like Cedenco and the wineries out to pasture.

If Gisborne had a clear economic vision that valued and protected its water, it would have something to assess new opportunities against.

As a Chamber of Commerce member I would like the chamber, and council, to get an independent expert to do the maths using a quadruple bottom line on the real long-term costs and benefits to the community of an oil industry in Gisborne, including the opportunity cost to existing industries, and the cost to our environment and health.

MELUA WATSON
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