Under the National Government between 2009 and 2017, drilling
rights in the deep ocean surrounding New Zealand were sold off
to big oil companies including Petrobras, Anadarko, Shell,
Statoil and OMV. The Texan oil company Anadarko drilled a deep
sea exploratory well off the coast of Raglan and then another
off the coast of Dunedin risking catastrophic oil spills.
Exploratory drilling is the most dangerous part of oil
production and adding the challenges of drilling in very deep
water compounds the risks. Greenpeace NZ modelled what could
happen in the event of a spill at both sites.
Following a long and hard-fought campaign against deep sea oil
drilling, the Ardern Government put an end to oil exploration in
April 2018 putting NZ's vast EEZ off limits to oil exploration.
This leaves only a small number of existing permits at risk from
exploratory drilling.
Loading data...
Press these buttons to visualise the possible impacts of a
spill
Probabilities of oil exceeding 1g/m2 in summer
after 120 days for both locations targeted for deep sea oil
drilling. From light to dark: 5% - 20% - 35% - 50% - 65% - 80%
- 95%.
We are sorry this interactive map is not available for small
devices. Please make sure to visit this web site on a tablet
or personal computer for the full experience.
Loading content...
Map loaded with limited functionality
We are sorry, your system does not support the fully
interactive version of this map.
Please use a
modern browser on
a desktop computer for the full experience, or continue
to the limited, (but still richly informative) version
of this map.