Kuriger Barbara; Woods MeganBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Madam Chair. To the Minister: given it is likely to be at least a decade before a pump hydro project is built if it is built at all and that New Zealand has experienced in the last 12 months an electricity system that's lost resilience from reduced gas production has she received any advice on potential imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to New Zealand over the next decade? Following on from that question: has she set aside funding or requested officials to do any work on the potential to import LNG into New Zealand? A third part to that is: has the Minister received any advice on the economic cost and greenhouse gas emissions of importing that and how would this compare to utilisation of potential gas reserves right off the coast of our own country? Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): Thank you Madam Chair. I do actually now have that data about the percentage of coal in our electricity system: 10 percent of that is there. In terms of the role of gas going forward I think the assertions that decisions that we made—the Government under the previous term—to end the issuing of new offshore exploration permits has had any impact on what we're seeing with production problems off a couple of gasfields I would remind members that actually to bring a field to production takes far more than 24 months. They still would be exploration permits so they'd be a long way from being production permits. In fact the Advertising Standards Authority found that to be a false assertion during the election campaign and ruled against some political parties using that as a line. The assertion that often accompanies that is that there hasn't been any investment in our current fields and that that's part of the problem. Well actually we've had over $1 billion worth of investment since we made that decision and there is quite a sprightly spring season in terms of bringing rigs planned for this year. So I think we've got an important debate ahead of us as a country and I just ask all members of this House to base that debate in fact. I think we'll be far more served as a nation. Then we had a series of questions from the National Party energy spokesperson which were talking about the lost resilience of the electricity sector because of the failure of fossil gas to deliver that security of supply that we need in a dry year. What I would point out to the member is that actually we're back now in terms of our hydro lakes to 99 percent in the southern system; 99 percent of historical average across—no actually 103 percent in the southern system; 99 percent across the whole country. But we will keep experiencing dry years and this is just why we're investing in that feasibility study around pumped hydro. I would have liked to have seen us start that work a decade ago. We would be in a much better position as a country if previous Governments had taken decisions that it was obvious were going to be required under agreements that they'd signed up to around climate change commitments—that we would have had to have looked at ways to decarbonise the storage of energy in this country—but we have done that. There was a very specific question from the member too about whether or not I'm receiving advice on importing liquefied natural gas. No I'm not. I'm aware that the Gas Industry Co. is currently looking at that but that's not something that we're considering.