The Energy Resources Taranaki Forum was supposed to hold their annual conference in New Plymouth today but due to climate activists coming from across the country to stop them, they decided to cancel and meet online. The climate protectors wasted no time in finding a second target this morning, blockading the central New Plymouth building of oil and gas company Todd Energy.

“We’re here to disrupt the oil and gas industry from their business as usual, to send them a message that they have no social licence to continue harming our communities and our planet. Despite Minister Jones claiming we don’t want to dialogue, we asked to speak at the energy forum but they refused us entry. So we said we’d protest and they called us a “threat” and now they hide their secret invite-only conference online. We are not violent. We are peacefully blocking the doors to their building for the people of Tuvalu and all other front line communities struggling with companies and politicians who don’t appear to give a damn about them. We’re just here to speak truth to this industry’s violence,” said spokesperson Rob Ritchie from Climate Justice Taranaki.

“The new government may think they can renege on the oil and gas ban and international agreements and ignore protesters but they are fossil fools if they think they can also keep flogging this dying industry. Gas reservoirs are near empty in this country. No matter how much money and years they waste drilling again and again, it’s pointless, it’s just a bad investment. Drilling companies like Statoil, BP, Shell, Anadarko, Chevron, TAG and Petrobras all left with OMV leaving too now. Todd Energy is one of the last big companies still stubbornly refusing to face reality.”

“Aotearoa is falling behind the global race to decarbonise,” said Michelle Ducat from Rise Up For Climate Justice. “We have to prepare to live without fossil fuels from here or any other country. The world is transitioning away from harmful extractive, export economies towards local, regenerative economies living again within ecological and social boundaries. Smart companies and decision-makers should join the transition and not drive our economy backwards into social bankruptcy and ecological disaster. We need efficient, renewable power for hospitals, schools and homes that will last more than a politician’s fundraising campaign for non-existent gas reserves.” 

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