Opponents of Fracking and Deep Sea Oil Drilling Protest in Wellington
 
Wellington, Monday 4 May 2012: Today 100 people representing communities all over the country threatened with the impacts of fracking and deep sea oil drilling protested outside the Ministry of Economic Development (MED), Straterra and the Brazilian Embassy.
 
Calls were made for a nationwide fracking moratorium until the report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is released later this year and the practise can be guaranteed to be safe for each region. Christchurch, and Kaikoura councils have already declared themselves ‘frack free’ districts.
 
Outside MED protest placards read: ‘TAG oil, frack off’, ‘Get the frack out of here National’, and ‘Clean water, clean food, clean air’. Echoing off the buildings were chants such as, ‘Hey hey, ho ho, these freakin frackers have got to go’.
 
MED staff numbers have been increased by 50 positions to facilitate multi-national companies to access minerals, oil and to frack for gas. All have extremely negative toxic environmental impacts and will economically benefit overseas corporations to the detriment of our own country.
Despite Government promises that Schedule 4 conservation land would remain protected from mining interests, prospecting permits have since been approved for parts of Fiordland and Kahurangi National Parks including some world heritage areas.

Straterra is the industry group with ‘bottomless pockets’ lobbying for the greatest ease of access to our public mineral and fossil fuel resources and is happy to bulldoze public opinion on these issues.
Straterra staff met protesters in their foyer. Protesters left disillusioned with the weasel words of corporate public relations they heard.

The final stop was at the Brazilian Embassy whose officials helped broker the deal for Petrobras (mostly owned by the Brazilian Government) to search for oil in the deep sea of the Raukumara Basin off East Cape. This provoked huge controversy last year when Te Whanau a Apanui and Greenpeace joined forces to protest against the controversial exploits.
Representatives of Te Whanau a Apanui and Ngati Porou with many others made their voices heard outside the Embassy.
 
Only weeks after the Seabed and Foreshore Act was signed in 2004, seabed areas the size of New Zealand had permits approved for oil and mineral prospecting. The Government had nationalized the seabed for international corporate access interests – but had argued they were protecting beach access rights for the public.
 
Today’s protest was on the back of the hikoi ‘Aotearoa is Not For Sale’.
 
Tomorrow protest action on coal mining and associated climate change will see activities in Wellington’s Midland Park on Lambton Quay, Wellington between 12pm-1pm.

ENDS

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