On the eve of the global climate strike, New Zealand’s biggest oil and gas producer - Austrian OMV - has announced that it is looking to sell its New Zealand assets.

Greenpeace is celebrating the news saying that this is the final vindication of the campaign to end offshore oil exploration in Aotearoa, and is calling on the National Party to take the opportunity to abandon its plans to bring back oil and gas exploration.

"This final curtain call for OMV heralds the inevitable end of oil exploration in Aotearoa and shows the strength of the ban on offshore drilling that hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders fought for and won," says Greenpeace head of campaigns, Amanda Larsson.

"For years we fought to end oil exploration, and the ban on new permits we won together with iwi and hapū who led the fight, is still this Government’s most significant climate action to date."

OMV’s decision is in stark contrast to National leader Christopher Luxon’s plans to repeal the ban and risk more oil exploration.

"In response to the tragic climate disasters on Auckland Anniversary weekend and Cyclone Gabrielle, the National Leader has admitted more needs to be done on climate change. This announcement from OMV is Luxon’s opportunity to do what John Key did when he walked away from the Orewa speech: to bring National’s policies in line with what the majority of New Zealanders believe.

"Even the conservative International Energy Agency has said that global oil and gas exploration should end immediately if countries are to successfully avert climate catastrophe.

"No one wants the pollution from our generation to destroy our children’s future. If we are to have a liveable planet, we cannot burn even the existing fossil fuel reserves, let alone look for more."OMV is New Zealand's biggest oil and gas producer and was the target of a sustained Greenpeace campaign in 2019. After two Greenpeace climbers scaled the OMV building in Wellington, nearly 30 protesters occupied OMV’s ‘henchboat’, the Skandi Atlantic, in the Port of Timaru for three days, delaying it from heading to a drill site. A week later, over a hundred people shut down OMV’s offices in New Plymouth for a further three days, before converting the building into the ‘ Museum of Oil History’.

"Since this relentless campaign, OMV has repeatedly delayed its plans to do appraisal drilling off the coast of Taranaki. Now finally it looks as though OMV has decided to abandon ship altogether."

Greenpeace’s campaign to "stop deep sea oil" began when the environmental heavyweight answered the call of East Coast iwi Te Whānau-ā-Apanui who faced the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras exploring for oil in the Raukumara Basin. Together they pushed Petrobras out and the campaign continued, successfully pushing out Anadarko, Chevron, Statoil and others with OMV being the last oil major left.

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